Welcome Introduction Contents

Coming of age in New Zealand film

Setting the scene

The shot pans over a barren
                                             landscape
                                             townscape
                                             waterscape

a dark shape on the horizon
   enlarges   and becomes
a girl

Her clothes are daggy
she is not self-conscious

      Her family
is small          but close

if she has two parents
      only
      one
really matters

The wolf

She is minding her own business
doing whatever
is it    that girls do
   even weird girls like her

When the stranger strides in
confident
larger   than   life
                  And there they are now
                  talking to Mum
                                             or Dad

She
hates
the stranger
and finds them
                  strangerly attractive
      both at once

No wonder she is confused

         She begins to rebel

There goes innocence

She has reached menarche
      she reaches down
   and finds her fingertips
         are red and sticky

She refuses to accept this

but finds she is uncontrollably drawn to lipstick
and mirrors
and possibly boys

         She may see
         one or other
         of her parents
         having sex with the stranger

maybe through a partially opened doorway

She will probably run away

         The woman
         will scream as she climaxes

Happy endings

Her family pulls together
   as they sometimes do
         in times of
         adversity

         The stranger is expelled
                        flung out

            oil and water
            chalk and cheese

The girl
      who is almost a woman
is embraced       like a child

         because by the end of the movie

somebody is dead