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| 2007 IN REVIEW: |
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| 10 BEST: |
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| Red Road (Andrea Arnold) |
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| Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog) |
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| A Few Days in September (Quelques jours en septembre) (Santiago Amigorena) |
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| Them (Ils) (David Moreau, Xavier Palud) |
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| Paranoid Park (Gus van Sant) |
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| L'Ivresse du pouvoir (A Comedy of Power) (Claude Chabrol) |
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| Babel (Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu) |
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| The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass) |
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| After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) (Susanna Bier) |
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| Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola) |
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| INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL SELECTIONS: |
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| The Signal, The Witnesses (Les temoins), The Secret Life of Words, Sherrybaby, Manufactured Landscapes, The Lost, Audience of One, Death of a President, Away From Her, Crossing the Line, Exiled, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, The Night of the Sunflowers (La noche de los girasoles), Manufacturing Dissent, Noise, No Mercy for the Rude (Yae ui upneun gutdeul), , Inland Empire and from the American 70s retrospective: The Last Picture Show, The Long Goodbye and Two-lane Blacktop. |
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| Nurses Louise (Tanya Nolan) and Martha (Rosella Hart) |
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| One of a swag of New Zealand independent digital features released during the year, and one of the few to have a cinema release. Wellington writer/director Alex Galvin attempts a variation on the serial-killer genre. The variation is important, because it means sidestepping the traps inherent in merely following a by-the-numbers genre template. Anyone expecting a slasher flick overlayed with world-weary cynicism will be disappointed; this film is more ambitious, with more suspense than shock, twists on conventions rather than cliches, with a climax more ambiguous than cathartic. |
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| Set in rural NZ in 1932, When Night Falls depicts one lonely night for nurses Louise and Martha caring for an invalid patient (Kevin Keys) in his isolated house. Other staff are variously taken out of the picture, and the patient is incapacitated, so it very quickly becomes a battle of wits between the nurses and a killer on the loose outside. Or does it? There is a "nice" nurse in love with her patient and a "mean" one who could be jealous - or worse. |
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| The period setting makes the formal touches in manner and dialogue more plausible: the implicit master/staff relationship, the crisp white uniforms, the older nurse using her experience as a psychological weapon. Galvin uses a battery of dramatic effects in often perverse ways. The dominant nurse is much shorter than her colleague, there are unexplained doorknocks and objects appear to have moved of their own accord, the phone line remains intact but any help is too distant to have any effect, the protagonists gradually become anatgonists. Initially the interiors appear overlit, but this actually establishes the house as a bright oasis in a long night of uncertainty, and Matthew Sharp's photography has an admirable consistency. While a lot of effort has gone into the sound design (by Tony Burt), I disliked his music - but it's a long time since I've heard a genuinely interesting synthesiser score in any movie. |
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| The two nurses may be familiar stereotypes, but actors Tanya Nolan (Louise) and Rosella Hart (Martha) tread a fine line between hokey caricature and knowing irony - no easy task in a genre where females are normally required to portray hapless victims easily outwitted by clever psychopaths. |
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| When there are references to a genre classic (like say, Psycho) they're forgivable and do not undermine Galvin's original touches. But ultimately, When Night Falls feels a little too long; the pacing a lttle too measured. The similar "one night in a lonely house" French film Them, screened at this year's International Film Festival is a mere 77 minutes and all the more effective for it. |
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| (Viewed on DVD) |
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