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the audience applauded

Awesome Movie

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This is one of the two simple films about art that made deep impact on me even after all these years since their releases.Patricia Rozema's "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing" deals with the subjectivity of art which is always relevant in any context. The master's childish art is readily being celebrated and consumed like fast food while the amateur's masterpiece is undiscovered but remain sacred. It reminds us to keep true art away from the corruption of consumerism.Victor Erice's "The Quince Tree Sun" is probably the most boring film you'll ever watch, but just as the artist finds it impossible to capture the shifting sunlight, we realize it is no longer important to finish a piece of painting, if at all it is possible, as art is in the process not the result. We consciously experience the passing of time while watching the film! Brilliant.Both films allow art to be taken to a different level, beyond the reaches of commercialism and physicality.

I would love to embrace Canadian cinema. I really would. And I don't mind a little weirdness. But mermaids in Lake Ontario? Silly words passing as satire? Somebody owes me an hour and twenty minutes. That's what I squandered on this foolishness masked as art. Please tell me we can do better than this. (And the thing was taxpayer-funded!) Good grief! They tell me people stood up at Cannes when it was over. What did they do immediately after standing up? Was it a polite exodus, or was it a stampede. How could you "spoil" this? In the final scene, after the credits, Polly opens the door to her squalid apartment we see a forest scene. They wander off to together and we go to black. Hello! This is one of those films, conceived in a disgruntled moment, that needs subtitles to guide us thru the morass of symbolism and allusion

This is an intellectually ambitious film about meta-art: What is the relation between an art object and intense aesthetic experience? What is the value of the art object if it is devoid of the cultural "frame"? How are certain people legitimized to confer value upon art objects?The film deals with big questions. Even so. Its main character is someone who is so endearing that you care very much about what happens next. It counts as an offbeat "warm 'n' fuzzy" flick. The humor is both deft and sweet.As someone who teaches at a college, I think this would be a very *teachable* film. Use it to raise and illustrate these questions in an aesthetics class, or in a class discussing the creation/ propagation of artistic canons.

I first saw this Canadian film when it was released in 1987. I was a college undergraduate, and the film has never left my memory since then. The movie is original, startling, lovely, hilarious, and thought-provoking.It's a shame that it hasn't been made available on DVD, but I read on the director's official Web site (patriciarozema.com) that Miramax Films is going to re-release the movie. That's exciting! Perhaps they'll also release it on DVD. (Miramax, if you're reading this -- put it out on DVD!)If you ever have a chance to see this film, see it.