River Queen

(Herald rating: * *)

It would be a happy duty to report that the new film by Vincent Ward, the prince of New Zealand art film, arrives in cinemas bearing no scars of its fraught production.

But that is far from being the case. The extravagant use of voiceover - not all of it, one suspects, by actress Samantha Morton - particularly during the opening 20 minutes; the abrupt changes of visual tone; the choppy editing; the odd use of stars like Stephen Rea (who appears only fleetingly) and Kiefer Sutherland (whose character is dramatically irrelevant if not inexplicable); the repeated fades to black; the bizarre choral soundtrack; all combine to suggest a film that was the subject of a rescue operation rather than thoughtful composition in post-production.

But many of the film's problems are more fundamental: Ward says it's not an historical drama so much as a story about identity. But if Morton, as the lead character, is wrestling with such a weighty question, she manages to do so invisibly.

Whether mourning the loss of her son or trying to come to grips with the fact that his kidnap has changed everything, she displays about as much emotional turmoil as a Central Otago farmer at the saleyards.

Such a performance by an actress who has given distinguished work to other notable directors must be ascribed, at least in part, to Ward.

Morton plays Sarah, the daughter of a surgeon (Rea) in an Irish garrison on the banks of the Whanganui in 1854 at the height of the Land Wars. She has a child by a Maori boy, and six years later her son is kidnapped by the local iwi who want him brought up as a Maori. For years she searches for him, and it is only when the rebel chief Te Kai Po (Morrison) falls ill that she is offered the chance to have her son back if she can heal him. What she finds in the chief's upriver fastness is a son torn between two cultures, and before long she is similarly divided.

It's a resonant story, but the script by Toa Fraser and Ward is littered with purple prose ("on the edge of a wilderness that God himself forgot") and glaring improbabilities (Morton has a hell of a lot of Persil-white costume changes for someone who took only an overnight bag upriver).

The Maori sometimes speak Maori and sometimes Billy T. James English, and Sutherland, a kilt-clad Irishman, seems to be auditioning for a pirate film.

The film is not without its redeeming features. As Bain, the leader of the colonial forces, Anton Lesser is a haughty and genuinely malevolent presence and there are moments of the characteristic ravishing visual compositions we expect from Ward.

But the film lacks chemistry and conviction and, except as unconscious and grotesque comedy, never really works.

CAST: Samantha Morton, Kiefer Sutherland, Cliff Curtis, Temuera Morrison, Stephen Rea, Anton Lesser
DIRECTOR: Vincent Ward
RUNNING TIME: 112 Minutes
RATING: M (contains violence)
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts