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I've Heard the Mermaids Singing centres on the engaging and whimsical Polly Vandersma, a naïve and "organizationally impaired" temporary secretary and amateur photographer in Toronto who tells the story of her unwitting involvement in art fraud to a video camera stolen from her workplace. Though timid and gauche on the outside, Polly leads an intense inner life. Her fantasies of flying, walking on water and conducting a Beethoven symphony are represented in black and white sequences which punctuate the film. Polly falls in love with the beautiful and sophisticated Gabrielle St Peres after being hired by Gabrielle to assist in the running of a trendy art gallery. Motivated by adoration, Polly smuggles a picture by Gabrielle into the gallery for display, initiating events which eventually reveal a conspiracy between Gabrielle and her lover, Mary Joseph, to pass off Mary's artwork as Gabrielle's. After an angry confrontation, Polly returns to her apartment to complete the video of her confession. The film ends on an ambiguous note with Polly either having achieved a reconciliation with Gabrielle and Mary or having launched into another of her dream fantasies.
Mermaids, with its emphasis on an eccentric, single woman, its non-sensational representation of lesbianism and its imaginative use of video-in-film to construct Polly's retrospective narrative, is an unusual mainstream Canadian film. Yet Patricia ROZEMA uses these strategies, often associated with experimental and feminist counter-cinema, to tell the story not of a radical, self-confident woman, but of an endearing, gamine-faced klutz. Polly's qualities of innocent good-heartedness, read by some viewers as essentially Canadian, earned the film international legions of charmed viewers. But critics have also faulted Rozema for the allegorical and quasi-religious themes of the film, and for her hesitancy to represent the lesbianism of the major characters more directly. Financed by government money and costing less than $400 000 to make, Rozema's first feature, against all odds, won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987. See also FEATURE FILM; I'VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING: CREDITS.
 Rozema, PatriciaThe filmmaker confronts her Calvinist roots in her film "When Night is Falling" (courtesy Maclean's).
 I've Heard the Mermaids SingingSheila McCarthy in Patricia Rozema's film I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (courtesy Toronto International Film Festival Group).
Author
BRENDA AUSTIN-SMITH
Links to Other Sites
Patricia Rozema
This website offers a profile of talented Canadian writer, director and producer Patricia Rozema. Also features synopses of her internationally acclaimed feature films.
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing
The Miramax website for the film "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing."
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing
Variety's information page for the film "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing."
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