Synopsis "Far From Maddy (in English)"
From Adam Short(Executive Assistant)THE RHODE ISLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - "C.C. Saint-Clair's genre is GLBTIQ, but we were struck by how vividly she portrayed human emotion and need in the screenplay of her novel, Far From Maddy. We felt that her story speaks to a larger audience." --- Twenty-year-old Jo Brenner unexpectedly opts out of a promising future to make herself homeless by choice, squatting the garden of an apparently vacant house. This move propels Maddy, her lover, into Jo's dark past while she struggles to keep her safe from a self-destructing lifestyle. --- In Far from Maddy, C.C. Saint-Clair displays her keen ability to recall how it feels to be a child, a young woman, a young lesbian. She conveys her recollections and imaginings through her skilful use of language and imagery, which vividly evoke feelings and memories from childhood. Once again woven throughout this gritty tale is the leitmotif of this thinking woman's lesbian romance' writer: her erotic, subtle and sensuous language of desire, lust and love between women. Many of us relate to the feeling of powerlessness that we experienced as children, and which still can be triggered by current interactions, particularly those with intimate others. As a child, Jo tried to survive, the best way she could, her mother's illness, alcoholism and suicide; her father's emotional absence; and the loss of her much older sister when that sibling left home. As a young woman, Jo's interactions with Maddy, despite their loving relationship, trigger the fear of being emotionally dependent on her lover and of being vulnerable to the potential loss inherent in an intimate relationship. It is that fear that, subsequently, leads to her 'disappearance'. C.C. Saint-Clair's usual poetic language contrasts starkly with the parental violence it describes; deepening the threat of that anger, making the child's pain and bewilderment unbearable. "The light from the garden is trapped inside the glass. Jo watches the refracted light as it spins, as the spray of transparent liquid curves outwards and back. She's already traced its path. She won't have to duck for this one. The thing is Jo doesn't know, not fully, why her mother has hurled the glass at her. And it is not knowing that makes her a bad daughter. A bad daughter who precipitates her mother's bad moods. Bad girl. I'm a bad girl, she reprimands herself silently."
