New Zealand films often gravitate toward themes of childhood, and this latest local feature offers a particularly grim view of what growing up can be like.
Adrian is already an outsider at eleven years old. He lives with his grandmother who has her hands full with her manic-depressive son and offers Adrian the minimum of care. At school he survives on the fringes. He has one friend – when it suits him and the older, more popular kids aren’t looking.
Adrian becomes fascinated with a news story about three children suspected to have been abducted nearby. When three kids move into the ramshackle house next door, it’s no surprise that Adrian becomes convinced they are the abducted children and forms a tentative, brittle friendship with the older girl.
This film will bring back the horrors and the small joys of childhood. Borgman perfectly captures the small humiliations of a child’s life – swimming in the school pool, dropping a football, being teased for associating with an uncool kid…
The cinematography is gorgeously documentary in style, capturing the harshness and beauty of Adrian’s world. The performances are universally strong, especially from the child actors who never show an ounce of precociousness in their roles. This speaks volumes about the strength of the direction because capturing natural children’s performances takes considerable skill.
This is a wonderful film until the abrupt and inconclusive ending that leaves too many unanswered questions to be fully satisfying.
7/10
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New Zealand, Denmark | 88 minutes | Drama
Cast: Demos Murphy, Angelina Cottrell, Catherine Wilkin, Matthew Sunderland, Finn Holden
Director: Daniel Joseph Borgman
Screenplay: Daniel Joseph Borgman (from the novel by Sonya Hartnett_
Cinematography: Sophia Olsson
