But my name is Veronkha

Archangel

(1990)

Maddin's second feature, the earliest I've seen, and not the most satisfactory, though of course rife with promising weirdness. It's 1919 at the titular remote port, but the noble Russians and their Allies don't know that the Great War is over, and the inhuman Huns keep attacking, while the even more brutish Bolsheviks cannibalize Mother Russia.

But of course what really matters is the eternal love quadrangle, plus a mistaken-identity angle. At one point, our hero, Canadian Lt. John Boles, asks the icy Russian Veronkha, "What if I were to call you Iris?" to which she replies, quoting a pop song of the previous year, "You can call me anything you like."