the hanging garden

Director: thom fitzgerald

Actor: chris leavins,kerry fox,ian parsons,peter macneill

Data Published: Fri Nov 07 1997

Genres: Drama,Romance

Key Words: gay,abusive father,wedding ceremony,sex lesson from prostitute,child abuse

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125128/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hanging_Garden_(film)

Description: The Hanging Garden is a movie starring Chris Leavins, Kerry Fox, and Ian Parsons. William, a once obese and depressed adolescent, is able to move past his teenage years when he moves to the city and comes out as being gay. When he...

Plot: 25-year-old Sweet William (Chris Leavins) returns to his parents' house in rural Nova Scotia after ten years of absence to attend the wedding of his sister Rosemary (Kerry Fox). It is revealed that he is gay and in the closet. He was an obese teenager (played by Troy Veinotte), who was caught having sex with his closeted bisexual friend Fletcher (Joel Keller) in the garden by his senile grandmother Grace when he was 15; Rosemary is marrying Fletcher. As a consequence of the ensuing rejection, particularly by his alcoholic father (Peter MacNeill), Sweet William had the choice of either running away to live in a big city far away from the family or end his life by hanging himself from a tree in the garden. In the movie, both the alive, now slender and self-assured Sweet William and the obese, suffocated teenage Sweet William, hanging as a fresh corpse in the garden, are present and interacting. In the version of reality where Sweet William dies, his family members cannot shed their memories of his death and carry on with their lives, whereas in the other version Sweet William is haunted by memories of his father's bouts of violence and is unable to reconcile with him. As well, a new family member, Violet (Christine Dunsworth) is subsequently revealed to have been fathered by Sweet William, from an incident when Sweet William's mother (Seana McKenna) took him to a prostitute in an attempt to "cure" his homosexuality. The cast also includes Sarah Polley, Joan Orenstein, Heather Rankin and a cameo appearance by Ashley MacIsaac.