Cowards Bend the Knee

AroView: A true original of contemporary cinema, dir. Guy Maddin here imparts the strange tale of a hockey player beset by monstrous desires, hinging in various icky ways on incest and sexual taboos, told in his trademark pastiche of early cinema aesthetics.

Structured into ten episodes which shift in dreamlike wooziness between hockey-rink, beauty salon and abortion clinic, this achieves a seedy, melodramatic and thoroughly unique atmosphere. Apparently something of an autobiographical statement by Maddin, the film was originally presented as a gallery installation at the Toronto Film Festival.