Polly Vandersma (Sheila McCarthy) shares her unique view of the world in I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing
I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING (Patricia Rozema, 1987)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, March 11, At Home and In Theater
212-660-0312
nyc.metrograph.com
www.kinolorber.com
“Gosh. You know, sometimes I think my head is like a gas tank. You have to be really careful what you put into it because it might just affect the whole system,” Polly Vandersma (Sheila McCarthy) says in I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. “I mean, isn’t life the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”
Considered one of the best films to ever come out of Canada, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing is plenty strange itself. The 1987 comedy is a unique exploration of queer culture and belongs with such 1980s underground fare as Smithereens, Liquid Sky, and Repo Man as well as James McBride’s 1967 David Holzman’s Diary. In her second film, McCarthy stars as the birdlike Polly, a quirky, self-described “unsuccessful career woman” and “gal on the go,” a not-very-good girl Friday who is content being a temporary secretary, the antithesis of the ’80s archetype embodied by Tess McGill, the ambitious thirty-year-old portrayed by Melanie Griffith in Mike Nichols’s 1988 Working Girl.
The story is told in flashback as Polly makes a video about her simple existence, kind of like a precursor to the confessions in MTV’s The Real World but without the self-aggrandizement. Polly lives alone in Toronto, with no friends; now thirty-one, she lost both her parents ten years before. She’s not exactly smart or well rounded and not much of a conversationalist. When gallery curator Gabrielle (Paule Baillargeon) offers her a full-time position, Polly jumps at the chance, ready to immerse herself in the contemporary art world, which she knows nothing about, and Gabrielle’s personal life, which includes the sudden, unexpected return of her old girlfriend, Mary (Ann-Marie MacDonald).
Polly is an aspiring photographer who snaps pictures of people on the street hanging out, playing sports, and falling in love, all activities that seem to evade her. She develops the film in her bathroom, which she has converted into a makeshift darkroom. Meanwhile, she has endearing fantasies of climbing buildings, flying, and walking on water. Her photos and fantasies are in black-and-white, countering the pastel colors of her daily life. When she finds out that Gabrielle is a painter — her canvases literally glow, as if descended from heaven (while evoking the mysterious object in the trunk of the Chevy Malibu in Repo Man) — she becomes obsessed with her mentor’s works as both of them decide to pursue their artistic talents further.
Filmed in Toronto in one month for $275,000, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, winner of the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, underwent a 4K restoration in 2017 as part of Canada 150, a celebration of the country’s 150th anniversary of its confederation. The title was taken from a line in T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me.”
McCarthy won the first of two Genie Awards for Best Actress, the Canadian equivalent of the Oscars, for Mermaids; she would nab the honor again six years later for Diane Kingswood’s The Lotus Eaters. She is mesmerizing as the endlessly eccentric, spikey-red-haired Polly, who is as peculiar and unpredictable as she is charming and endearing; it’s like she’s arrived from another planet, intent on learning what life can be about. Pay close attention to the scene in which Gabrielle and art critic Clive (Richard Monette) discuss a new painting by a gallery artist while Polly eavesdrops; they are actually talking about her potential transformation, even if she doesn’t realize it.
Rozema (Mansfield Park, When Night Is Falling) wrote, directed, edited, and coproduced the film, which features playful cinematography by Douglas Koch and a fab ’80s score by Mark Korven, alongside Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.
The restored version opens at Metrograph on March 11, with Rozema participating in a Q&A with multidisciplinary artist Laurie Anderson following the 6:30 screening on opening night. “I wanted to make a warm-spirited anti-authority film,” Rozema says in her director’s statement. “But most of all I wanted to make a film with Polly in it, one where she and I get to hear the mermaids singing.” We should consider ourselves fortunate to be able to do the same.