Overflow showing for exciting N.Z. film

Press, 17 July 1978, Page 6

Overflow showing for exciting N.Z. film

By

Howard McNaughton

“A State of Siege,” a film from the novel by Janet Frame, directed by Vincent Ward and produced by Timothy White. I So many people turned up I for the special screening of, I this New Zealand-made film lat the Academy Cinema yes-1 terday afternoon that it had to be shown twice — a very! emphatic indication of a basic need in the New Zea-i land arts. Janet Frame is one of our! greatest writers, a fact which: is of pleasingly little rele-> vance to the makers of this! film; its impact comes largely! because it takes nothing fori (granted, it generates its owni narrative energy from a! flimsy foundation of ideas! culled out of ! ',iss Frame. In no way does this film; merely illustrate the novel;: it does not pretend literal, fidelity to the book, and the! I producer and director (who jointly scripted it) have used (onlv fragments f Frame’s story, structure, and wordaee in a work which is essentially their own creation. The freshness, vitality, and unpretentiousness of this film are exhi'irating; whatever it has to say about New • Zealand, about Janet Frame, (about the artist “in extremis," develops organically, with unobtrusive subtlety. Theme is a product of expression: the desperate search for a theme occupies the camera just as it does the protagonist. Before we are five minutes! • into the film we are held engrossed by Alun Bollinger’s ■ photography of a primeval (bus on a gravel road. We are taken .inside the bus and,

through filthy windows, see, the blurred, faded, pastel j countryside crawling past.j The main character, a retired art teacher, is sitting; in the bus recalling her doc-

trine of colour expressivity; her search for a new way of looking at things is eloquen-

>|tly inferred by this irony, '[and her journey towards abstraction begins to gather ■ [intensity. I The woman arrives at her retirement cottage (apparently on the mainland, and (not noticeably to the north of the country)- She cleans ■[the house, and her new vision i [of her new environment I crystallises momentarily beII fore it. takes on night marish [properties and reduces her to [her death. 11 It is in terms of visual narilrative that this film achieves pits most fascinating complexiity. Many of Ffatne’s most i i elaborate gestures are “.severely simplified, and the i[ verba! content is very small; ■ but the visual articulation of ilthe nightmare and death is [ given a psychoexpressionistic

!, suggestiveness, the trauma liis actually less concrete than Jin the novel, and so the - woman’s derangement spirals freely to exhaustion. The progression of this

film is nicely structured tol carry the audience within! emotional extremes in 50:

, minutes. Rosalie Carey’s stage adaptation, speaking ■ much of the narrative, ran for 80 minutes; this film, • with its ironies, implications, - distortions, and deliberate I blurrings contrives to express i much more in the shorter i time. Anne Flannery, in the i main part, brings a wealth : of facial innuendo which is • interestingly explored by the i photographer, and does the i early episodes in the familiar Janet Frame plaits. This is an exciting film, ; and an exciting event — an ■ impressively professional ; achievement,' on just the i right scale, one feels, for an > emergent film industry to ; discover itself. A more sub- ' stantial cinema booking ; would obviously be well : justified.