A Trip to the Orphanage (2004)

"Liza?!?" - a review by andy-j

Okay, I really don't get this. I like the music, I like the singing.. but.. I dunno about that crazy ol' plot. As far as I can tell, it was about a lady who is dumping her little girl at the orphanage, and she is singing a song of woe. But then Cosmo Kramer says "goodbye mother" to Liza Minnelli, and so that little theory of mine went out the window. And then the film ended. Maybe next time?

Anyway, that's the last of my Guy Maddin short film reviews. I've used the word 'ridiculous' in all three.

"Deliciously pointless" - a review by pearly

A Trip to the Orphanage is more of a film clip than a short film, as far as I can tell. Better, it's a film clip for an operatic little number that looks like it would have been popular in the 1930s. Beautifully sung, yet pointlessly made into a "short film", the four minutes and some seconds of footage is shot like something from the thirties, even though it was made in 2004.

The film consists of black and white footage of the woman (Sarah Constible), overlayed with other footage of some lacy white curtains blowing in a rather strong breeze. There doesn't appear to be any orphanage, though I doubt that's the point. But that's just the thing - I don't get what exactly the point is supposed to be. It's a bit of a "huh?" film for me, and appears to be more of an exercise in technical experimentation than anything else.

"43 beans in every short" - a review by mino

A Trip to the Orphanage was the third and final Guy Maddin short I saw before a screening of Cowards Bend The Knee (2003). Unlike the other two, I'm not sure that there's much to say.

Maybe I didn't get it, but this short confused the crap out of me. I mean… in the immortal words of Lisa Simpson, it has nothing to do with anything! Basically, it's two minutes of some woman singing opera with gauze curtains or something billowing in the background, and the occasional shot of a glum-looking man traipsing about.

I'm sure there was some deep significance to all this, but as far as I could see, it was nearly indistinguishable from any given ad for Nescafé Blend 43 or something — which, you know, I can see for free, multiple times a day.

Sure did make me feel like a cup of instant coffee though.