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If it’s true that nothing is more boring than someone else’s dreams, a lot of filmmakers are in trouble. Especially the maverick Canadian Guy Maddin, who in this oneiric, silly, silent melodrama takes us, if not into the unconscious, then into a sperm sample that viewed through a microscope reveals the Winnipeg Maroons in an intense hockey game. After such an establishing shot, I, for one, could not be bored by what follows, though I confess to some moments of indignation. The hero, Guy Maddin (Darcy Fehr), star player of the Maroons, takes his girlfriend to the local beauty salon/brothel, where Dr Fusi, dressed in a whalebone corset, performs a fatal botched abortion. Guy, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Meta, the daughter of Liliom, proprietress of the salon/whorehouse. She enlists him in wreaking vengeance on her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, the murderers of her beloved father, whose blue-dyed hands she keeps in a jar. Comparisons to Electra and The Hands of Orlac might be apt, but what about the waxworks hockey team in the rafters of the arena? Applying the baroque silent-movie style of his The Heart of the World (2000) to the zany storytelling of his The Saddest Music in the World (2003), Maddin doesn’t achieve the coherence or impact of either, but I guarantee Cowards Bend the Knee will hold your interest. (60 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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