This gangster is haunted, literally. KEYHOLE begins with an inversion — a group of criminals have to fight their way past a police barricade into a house — and only gets stranger from there. Turns out their boss Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric), isn’t after any kind of swag, but an exorcism of the past. The house is his own, riddled with ghosts, and Pick — with a willing mystic and an unwilling kidnap victim in tow — seeks to contact these remnants of a shaded, violent past, including his wife (Isabella Rossellini), possibly to banish them forever.
KEYHOLE is another stylish, enigmatic examination of the human soul by the Canadian master of such, Guy Maddin. Shot (mostly) in black and white, with a noirish tone, a script co-written by Maddin and frequent collaborator George Toles, and key performances by Udo Kier and KIDS IN THE HALL’s Kevin McDonald, the film’s a strange and poetic examination of how the sins of the past can linger forever, and what it might cost to revisit them.
Maddin’s one of my favorite interviews, and I’m glad to finally get him on the podcast. Click on the player to hear our conversation.
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