Fires of Joanna.

Written, directed, and produced by Penny McCann. 42 minutes. 16mm. 1998.

Ottawa filmmaker Penny McCann's elemental Depression era tale of repression and desire is an ambitious and impressive treatment of how a nation founded on "peace, order and good government" crushes the passion of its inhabitants. This is the story of Joanna (again Tracy Wright), an epileptic woman haunted by the deaths of her brother and her mother. Marginalized in her God-fearing community and possessing the power to start fires with her thoughts, Joanna lives with her stern father (Steven Bush) on a farm somewhere, as he puts it, on the "goddamn useless land." Between the church, home, the circus and the cinema, Joanna's insistent dreams and desires are constantly thwarted. Shifting poetically from past to present, McCann weaves themes of guilt, sexual awakening, and gender politics into an often startling narrative of solitude, Canadian style. While not unlike those unforgettable (but considerably more gooey) physical consequences of repression in the films of David Cronenberg, The Fires of Joanna's concerns more closely resemble the highly charged erotic and spiritual malestrom found in Paul Almond's famous trilogy (Isable, The Act of the Heart, Journey). Despite a few awkward moments, The Fires of Joanna is an assured, accomplished film of considerable sensitivity and intelligence. Like its protagonist, it searches courageously for ways to remember, ways to imagine and ways to desire.