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This 1987 Canadian offering based on a true story seeks to offend and to provoke its audience as it dissects the sordid last days of a middle-aged feminist bent on self-destruction. Writer-director Jackie Burroughs plays Marsie Holder, a woman wasting away in Mexico and engaging in sexual trysts with the men she encounters. Bouts of alcoholism and illness shape her days and anonymous sexual encounters frame her nights. Through it all she analyzes her place in the world and pontificates on the role of women through her voluminous correspondence, even as she wastes away in the Acapulco sun and slides downward into an eventually fatal abyss. Shot in a harsh
verité style, the film is unapologetic in its assessment of the promiscuous and reckless author, while still showcasing her wry and caustic take on the battle of the sexes. A controversial offering at the Toronto Film Festival,
A Winter Tan is both a challenging polemic and an unblinking character study.
--Robert Lane
