WINDOW HORSES WAXES POETIC

CHRIS KNIGHT

Ann Marie Fleming’s first feature-length animation in 12 years, Window Horses tells the story of a young woman of Persian-Chinese descent, living in North Vancouver, who gets invited to a poetry contest in the Iranian city of Shiraz. In other words, it’s a quintessentially Canadian tale.

As the film opens, Rosie Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh) has just self-published a book subtitled Poems By a Person Who Has Never Been to France. In fact, she’s never been much of anywhere, so when an invite to a poetry slam halfway across the world arrives in her mailbox, it doesn’t take much prodding from her best friend (Ellen Page) for her to accept.

Arriving in Iran, Rosie goes overboard trying to fit in, opting for the full chador rather than the more modern hijab or head scarf. Her out-of-place-ness is also signified by the fact that Fleming chooses to draw her in her signature “stick-girl” style, while the rest of the characters get fully formed bodies.

Rosie is also a bit in awe of the other poet/performers, who include a Chinese dissident and an annoying German poseur, the latter given hilarious voice by Don McKellar. Their work — and all the poems within the film

— are presented in a variety of animation styles, and sometimes in the original language, without subtitles; we’re meant to understand them on an emotional level rather than a linguistic one.

But the plot is uneven. While it’s true the event is as much a cultural exchange as a poetry reading, it does sometimes feel that we are being spoon-fed Persian literary history.

This gets even more pronounced when she mentions that her father was an Iranian man who abandoned his family when she was a child; suddenly it seems as though everyone with whom she comes in contact knew something of his tortured tale of a life lived through the Revolution of ’79 and the subsequent eight years of war with Iraq.

That’s not really a criticism; Window Horses may be a fairly linear story, but there’s no rule that says poetry or drama has to tie itself up in knots. And it’s lovely to watch how Fleming finds a way to express verse in animation.