I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987)

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me." -- T.S. Eliot

In I'VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING (1987), Polly is a lonely, clumsy temp in Toronto who talks to a video camera and takes photographs no one ever sees. She lands a job at a chic art gallery run by an impossibly sophisticated curator, and falls completely under the woman's spell.

What begins as whimsy becomes a sly skewering of the art world and the sophisticates who decide what has value. We come to suspect that the truest eye belongs to the awkward outsider nobody takes seriously.

Patricia Rozema made it as her first film, with a grant letter from David Cronenberg and special effects that reportedly cost sixty dollars. It won a standing ovation at Cannes and made its budget back nearly thirty times over.