Patricia Rosema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987)

Educated in Literature, Patricia Rosema's films sometimes announce the fact by their titles: the film But at My Back I Always Hear is of course a reference from Andrew Marvell's poem 'To His Coy Mistress', as 'I have heard the mermaids singing' is a reference from T.S. Eliot's poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'.

But will the mermaids sing to Polly (Sheila McCarthy)? On the face of it it looks doubtful, and an employer once described her as 'organisationally impaired'. Right from the start, as Polly begins her first of several interruptions by narrative comment, we realise that this expression is a rather lame euphemism for Asperger's syndrome: socially, she's a failure, having no friends, in ten years since leaving home has only had a couple of very short-lived relationships, and a little into the film we discover that she is clumsy, awkward with machines as well as people, keeps saying the wrong things, and takes everything literally. She's a 'person Friday', but would anyone ever employ her permanently?

Well, yes, as Gabrielle (Paule Baillargeon) takes a liking to her and asks if she'd like to do secretarial work for her at her art gallery on a permanent basis: the deal is agreed to during a Japanese meal, when Polly is having an awful time trying to pick up food with a chopstick in each hand.

Patricia Rosema is openly lesbian, and her clumsy way Polly is kind of in love with, er, her angel Gabrielle. But disappointment comes when Mary (Ann-Mair McDonald) suddenly turns up, as she's a former (and much younger) lover of Gabrielle's.

I found the first half wonderfully fresh and arresting, although the second half plays down the Asperger elements which provided so much of the pleasure and humour. But the 'visions' (as Rosema calls them) run throughout, are far more than conventional reveries, and one of them concludes the film fittingly.