Dancing in the Dark

Hailed as the most impressive and assured feature film debut by an English Canadian director in many years, Leon Marr's DANCING IN THE DARK is a remarkable film about the ultimate mad housewife. It sustains a credible feminine point-of-view that is exceptional partly because the director is male. Edna (Martha Henry) is a woman whose dreams have shattered into more pieces than she can pick up. Marr combines pure horror with covert hilarity as Edna wipes and cooks and inches her way toward violence and catatonia. Having sacrificed her own desires for an impossible dream of domestic bliss, Edna is ill-equipped to deal with gathering evidence of her husband's betrayal and, as her dust-free dream fortress collapses, so does her sanity. Based on the Joan Barfoot novel, DANCING IN THE DARK is ORDINARY PEOPLE told from the mother's perspective.