This week, Isabella Rossellini gets legless at Sundance.

Isabella Rossellini may not have an Oscar, but she definitely deserves some sort of prize for being every man’s choice for Hot Older Woman. It’s always puzzled me, because even when she’s cast in that role she often seems more amused by the attention than genuinely sexy – at least that’s what I thought until I saw her as a double amputee, dancing on a sparkling pair of beer-filled glass legs. Yes it’s true, and a legless Rossellini isn’t the strangest thing in Guy Maddin’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s (The Remains Of The Day) short story, The Saddest Music In The World.

Set in the perpetually freezing Canadian city of Winnipeg, our favourite object of well-mannered lust plays the fabulously wealthy Lady Port-Huntley, a Depression-era beer baroness who is offering $25,000 for music that will wrench the soul. Being a lover of sad things, I was looking forward to the music – played by an international cast of musicians Maddin auditioned during an epic open call – which turned out to be not so much sad as uproariously funny. In a weepy sort of way. And if you’ve been thoroughly confused by this entire description then you have a pretty good idea of what the movie is like. It’s either purely brilliant or brilliant like the genius madman that you edge away from on the subway.

Just a few days into Sundance and several movies have already picked up distribution. Conventional festival wisdom has it that the multimillion-dollar deals sealed here often don’t pay off in theatres, but I’m willing to bet on Open Water, a Blair Witch Project-meets-Jaws thriller. About two scuba divers who surface to find that their dive boat has left them in the middle of the Caribbean, Open Water was made with a skeleton crew that basically consisted of director Chris Kentis, his wife and producer Laura Lau, plus their families. The actors aren’t stellar but they’re very brave and the ingenuity of the filmmakers is amazing. Kentis and Lau did all of the cinematography, which involved hours of bobbing in shark-infested waters and yielded frightening, claustrophobic footage. Jade Chang 23 January 04

useful links:
www.sundance.org
www.openwater.com