In books of mythology and blockbuster movies, the figure of the mermaid is often independent, free, and mysterious. Wherever audiences know these creatures best, there is something enchanting about these fictional creations.
For Toronto filmmaker Ali Weinstein, much of the mermaid’s appeal has to do with that sense of simultaneous glamour and mystery.
“There’s definitely a mermaid trend right now,” she tells The CJN. “It seems to be this growing phenomenon and there’s a whole industry around it, including various tail-makers and conventions, and professional mermaids for hire.”
Weinstein’s film debut, the feature-length documentary Mermaids, concentrates on five women who frequently fulfil a personal fantasy by transforming into these sirens of the sea.
The title is alluring, and like the seas where these mermaids swim, there is a lot of substance beneath the surface. The chance to splash around is not just a shortcut to fun, as the film explores, but a way for the women to forget and overcome struggles in their lives.
Among those subjects is Julz Owen, a transgender woman who is part of a mermaid community in Southern California. Owen makes her own tails with help from the designer who also crafted the fin for the character played by Daryl Hannah in Splash.
Another central figure in Mermaids is Cookie De Jesus, a woman from Harlem who had a mermaid-themed wedding with husband Ralph and has embraced “mermaiding” as a therapeutic way to respond to personal trauma.
“Some (of the mermaids) just had this ineffable quality,” Weinstein says. “It’s not that they believed that they had a tail, but their connection to the iconography and what the mermaid represents to them was so genuine, there was nothing artificial about what they were doing.”
The women featured most prominently in Mermaids also do not resemble the unrealistically skinny characters from The Little Mermaid or Splash. Instead, the subjects vary in age, size, and background.
It was important for Weinstein to include scenes involving women who participated in performances in Weeki Wachee, Fla. That town is home to a mermaid theme park that has been open since the late 1940s.
The idea for the documentary, the director says, came from a New York Times Magazine article about the original mermaid performers from Weeki Wachee.
“I started thinking about what it does to someone psychologically to be able to put on a tail, immerse themselves in water, and have to perform as a mermaid and embody this universal archetype of a beautiful and independent woman,” she says.
One of those Florida mermaids, Vicki Smith, 76,recounts in the film how being a mermaid in Weeki Wachee was her first job – and that little else since has compared.
The job of playing a mermaid isn’t easy. A fin can be 30 or 40 pounds, the water is cold, and performers must rely on air hoses to enable them to breathe underwater.
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For Weinstein, a recent graduate of Ryerson’s documentary media studies program and daughter of Toronto filmmaker Larry Weinstein, the film was also a chance to capture the visceral feeling of being a mermaid.
Various underwater interludes, shot by Toronto cinematographer Catherine Lutes with aid from scuba divers off the coast of Hawaii, are among the doc’s most stunning sequences.
“Part of my goal was to try to embody as much as possible… the feeling of swimming and weightlessness and peace that the subjects would so often describe,” Weinstein says.
Weinstein used to be a competitive synchronized swimmer. Still, the close interaction with this subject prompted her to try on the tail herself.
“I could see how when people wear tails, they get to really transform mentally,” she says. “You do feel superhuman in some way. There is some magic to putting on that tail for sure.”
Mermaids opens for exclusive engagements in Regina on July 6, Victoria on July 7, Toronto on July 14, and Vancouver on July 18. For dates in other Canadian cities, visit filmswelike.com.