'Keyhole'

• SXSW Film

  Daily reviews and interviews

• The Dissolution of the First Family of Football

  BY MARK FAGAN

• Fab Four Restored

  BY RICHARD WHITTAKER

• Killin' It

  BY MARC SAVLOV

• What's Yours Is Mine

  BY MARC SAVLOV

• 'Beware of Mr. Baker'

  BY MARJORIE BAUMGARTEN

• 'Charles Bradley: Soul of America'

  BY AMY SMITH

• 'Fat Kid Rules the World'

  BY MELANIE HAUPT

• 'Keyhole'

  BY ANDY CAMPBELL

• 'God Bless America'

  BY MARJORIE BAUMGARTEN

• 'Dollhouse'

  BY MARC SAVLOV

• 'Compliance'

  BY MARJORIE BAUMGARTEN

• 'Black Pond'

  BY MONICA RIESE

• 'Dreams of a Life'

  BY WAYNE ALAN BRENNER

• 'The Comedy'

  BY ASHLEY MORENO

• 'Beast'

  BY JOE O'CONNELL

• Music Video Competition

  BY KATE X MESSER

• 'Thale'

  BY RICHARD WHITTAKER

Keyhole

What to expect from Winnepegian Guy Maddin this time around at South by Southwest? A gangster father named Ulysses – whose wife, Hyacinth, is aloofly played with aplomb by Isabella Rossellini – attempts to remember his troubled past (future?) in a large house defined psychologically and formally by swinging lighting of all kinds and ticky-tacky stage sets. That's to mention nothing of the watery bog out back that hides more skeletons than the La Brea Tar Pits. Liberally borrowing from Jean Cocteau's scary-dreamy aesthetic, this gangster-ghost mash-up uses its genre referents as objects in a still life – let them rot and they become a kind of cinematic vanitas. When one of the many recurring motifs is a masturbating son whose onanistic actions are accompanied by the soundtrack of dice rolling and exclamations of "Yahtzee!," you know you're not in Hollywood anymore. Good thing, too. And who said Canadians had no tooth?

Saturday, March 17, 7pm, SXSatellite: Alamo Village