The alienated youngster struggling to understand the adult world is a recurring motif in our cinema - and, for that matter, literature.
Films, from The God Boy, Vigil and The End of the Golden Weather to Whale Rider and The Strength of Water have explored the trope, and delivered some indelible child performances along the way.
The debut feature by Dunedin-born 32-year-old Borgman, who has made seven short films in Denmark, certainly earns a place in that list, but the film as a whole is somewhat less than the sum of its excellent parts.
His screenplay is described as being "inspired by" Australian Sonya Hartnett's 2002 novel Of a Boy, although it's closer to a conventional adaptation, with a significant change that removes the Gothic chill. The problematic result is that it has become a film without an ending.
Murphy plays 11-year-old Adrian, who was abandoned by his mother for reasons that emerge only slowly. His dull and gloomy home life with his careworn gran (Wilkin) and his wildly bipolar uncle Rory (Sunderland), is splendidly evoked in dark and shadowy interiors, and in his wider world mateship is fraught with the dangers of betrayal and shame.
