The second production (and the first to be released commercially) of the Film Commission's Escalator scheme, this dark and polished drama exudes an assurance that belies its limited resources and short shooting time.
A feature-film debut for director Vowell and lead actress Henderson (Bailey in Outrageous Fortune), who developed the script from a monologue she wrote in drama school, it has a dreamy, quasi-mythical quality that suits its impelling idea: the Maori notion of the fantail (piwakawaka) as a harbinger of death.
That sounds arty, but it's not at all. The film's symbolic framework never feels forced or phoney and when it delivers its payoff in the final reel, it is quietly devastating.
Henderson plays Tania, a young blonde woman whose belief that she is Maori -- she speaks cuzzie-bro fluently -- starts out as an oddball joke. But as the layers of the story peel back, we see the uncomfortable truth at its heart.
An attendant in the service station where almost all the film is set, she dotes on her goofy brother Pi (Ngamotu), who's always hanging round, and shoulders much of the care of her ailing mother. The pair dream of going to Queensland in search of their father but when Pi heads off to the Bay of Plenty to go fruit-picking, he's no longer under his sister's watchful gaze and things start to unravel.
