Mondo Canuck

>> Weird Sex & Snowshoes tackles our national film culture

by MATTHEW HAYS

Theory on Canadian film theory, as I recall it from my film school days, has it that our national film culture is littered with outsiders. Stuck in a realm somewhere outside the winner's circle that is Hollywood lore, our heroes are anti-heroes, losers, cowards, bullies and clowns, to paraphrase the theory itself.

Nudging the thinking on these and other issues along quite nicely is Vancouver Sun critic Katherine Monk, in her insightful and witty new entry Weird Sex & Snowshoes and other Canadian film phenomena.

Rather than try to rewrite the entire book of thought on Canuck cinema, Monk sensibly breaks things down into 10 thematically driven chapters, 20 profiles of important filmmakers and 100 reviews of significant films. Thus the book operates as a series of new thoughts and reflections on the art while also serving as useful reference guide.

Written in a pleasingly punchy, accessible style, Monk has a clear grip on the Zeitgeist, while never overlooking important historical detail. Her opening chapter, "Rooted in Realism: Where is here?" takes a good look back at the NFB and explores Canada's relation to realism in documentary traditions and beyond. In her final chapter, "The Leap of Faith: Selling Canadian Film," Monk takes a sobering look beyond the hype about our new marketability to examine, realistically, what the prospects and attitudes towards our features actually are.

Her profiles are good too, equal parts smarts and style. Take a line from her piece on Cronenberg: "In his godless universe, meaning must be self-derived through a process of personal investigation--and no mental tools can chisel away at the subconscious like conflict and a good intellectual challenge." And Monk punctuates the book with hilarious sidebars, including "An Inventory of Sexual Dysfunction in Canadian Film."

Weird Sex & Snowshoes is what our film culture deserves right about now. A book that is respectful, while not full of empty boosterism; a book that is rich with facts and detail, while never seeming stuffy or dreary; contemporary, while not ahistorical. Monk has created an important addition to the canon of thinking on our national cinema.

Weird Sex & Snowshoes by Katherine Monk, Raincoast, pb, 357pp, $26.95