Film
Expressing themselves
by Helene Wong
A low-budget Kiwi gem has Mike Leigh-like improvisation and a big emotional impact.
If you’re in Hokianga next weekend, or in Wairoa mid-June, you’ll have a rare chance to see Taking the Waewae Express (Maori-speak for “shanks’ pony”), a small digital gem that sparkles with a big emotional impact. Made and distributed on almost no budget by Wellingtonians Andrea Bosshard and Shane Loader, it’s been making its way quietly around the country since its premiere in Wellington last year. Too quietly, because it deserves much wider appreciation.
Originating as a project for students at the Wellington Performing Arts Centre, where Bosshard teaches screen acting, it shows bracingly what can be achieved using improvisation – à la Mike Leigh – to develop character and story. The process is simple, but the emotions generated are complex, and the performances not only skilfully communicate that complexity, but do it with restraint and truth as well as a disarming sweetness. It’s a story that deals with the worst and the best of that passage from youthful innocence to adulthood, delivering it with compassion and humour in a uniquely New Zealand way.
The youthful cast impress with their naturalness. Their cultural mix feels unforced, too – in fact, it’s one of the film’s best features. Rangimoana Taylor and Chong Sin Lim bring quiet dignity and gentle wisdom to the adults, and Wellington, night and day, looks great.
A second film is in the works, but if you can catch this one, don’t hesitate.
TAKING THE WAEWAE EXPRESS, directed by Andrea Bosshard and Shane Loader; HOKIANGA FILM FESTIVAL, May 29-June 1; WAIROA MAORI FILM -FEST-IVAL, June 18-21.
Not everyone will feel comfortable with Trouble Is My Business, but Juliette Veber’s decision to observe rather than take sides on the subject of how to discipline children is an inspired directorial choice. It’s a debate that will never end, and she shows us why: there is no one way.
The way of Gary Peach, assistant principal responsible for “student management” at Aorere College in South Auckland, is under observation here. Striding purposefully through the school grounds, issuing commands by megaphone, obsessing about litter, “Peachy” seems from a bygone era. Yet in the case of three Maori and Polynesian students variously at risk from drugs, gangs and bullying, his combination of authoritarianism and tough love seems to give them the clarity and consistency they’re missing.
Veber, who was arts coordinator at the school, patiently documented their stories for six months. Shooting in high-definition on a small hand-held camera, she literally dogged Peachy’s footsteps. While there seem to be many sequences following the solid expanse of his white shirt as they repeatedly make the trek to the principal’s office, that very angle puts us squarely and brilliantly in the point of view of the student travelling in his wake. The repetition is never boring; there is always intense emotion colouring it.
Thus, by giving us a subjective experience – there are no talking heads, and only the briefest of comment or exposition – Veber and editor Cushla Dillon elicit suspense, concern and hope for the student, and empathy with the teacher, and leave us to judge for ourselves. A non-sensational, sensitive treatment of a sensitive subject.
TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS, directed by Juliette Veber.
How do you update the prison-break genre for today’s audience? You fiddle with the structure, give the prison a hothouse ambience, create a surprise cracker of a dénouement. The Escapist does all this, throwing in the likes of Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes and Damian Lewis as well.
Rupert Wyatt and co-writer Daniel Hardy hit us with the escape upfront, then intercut with flashbacks of what led up to it – motive, planning, conflict. There’s no time for back stories, but what you lose in character development is made up for in energy, powerful visual storytelling and a visceral sense of place and prison culture. The bad guy roles are seized with relish by a raft of British thesps. And if, on reflection, that ending produces some big holes, it still does a nice job of bringing thematic heft to the story.
