Rufus and Martha Wainwright in a glorious and moving concert tribute to their mother Kate McGarrigle – with Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, Teddy Thompson and Michael Ondaatje. “Uplifting and absorbing.” — Hollywood Reporter
An uplifting and absorbing film about the healing power of music as a cathartic, communal, celebratory life force.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2012
Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle 2012
The albums of the McGarrigle sisters are surely for the ages, with their plangent harmonies and their worldly, Arcadian-inflected songs of true love, broken hearts and wandering spirits. Sadly, younger sister Kate died in 2010 at the age of 63. Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You captures, superbly, the heart-achingly gorgeous New York concert mounted in tribute by her rather talented family – children Rufus and Martha Wainwright and older sisters Anna and Jane, along with a wider musical whanau including Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, Teddy Thompson and (the film’s great who-the-hell-is-that? revelation for me) Krystle Warren. Michael Ondaatje turns up to pay tribute to the poetry with which the McGarrigles could shape a song into a spellbinding journey. You feel the mourned and celebrated Kate in the room at every moment as song after song lifts off, channelling rich emotion in arrangements of intricate loveliness. Rufus Wainwright, that ‘First Born Son’ she so memorably and amusingly confessed to idolising as a baby, now carries her torch with passion and panache. — BG