Metro Cinema Society: Tideland

Tideland

Canada/UK 2006, 122 min, 35mm, Dir: Terry Gilliam

Definitely not a commercial success, Tideland is just as definitely something to behold; we simply can't let Terry Gilliam's latest film go past Edmonton without seeing the silver screen. Tideland reunites Gilliam with Jeff Bridges in a delirious, hallucinatory tale set against the wheat fields and big sky of the Prairies. But the centre of the film is Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), a spry, endlessly curious girl who is apparently unfazed by anything - including jamming needles into her junkie parents' arms. Bridges plays Noah, a burnt-out rock star who lives in squalid retirement with his equally blitzed, semi-hysteric wife (Jennifer Tilly), whose death forces Noah and Jeliza-Rose to retreat to a ramshackle wooden house. Noah's drugged stupor leaves Jeliza-Rose alone to roam the beckoning grasslands and lose herself in a fantasy world of bog-men and doll's heads, until she befriends Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), a mentally challenged young man. Dickens dresses in swim gear, lorded over by his strange sister Dell (Janet McTeer), a witchlike woman with a macabre interest in taxidermy. Gilliam draws on Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, but his touch keeps this from being a fairy tale for children, and is instead a delirious assault on the senses.