Witi Ihimaera has proven to be a valuable provider of source material for New Zealand film over the years. There’s Whale Rider, obviously, and Mahana (adapted from “Bulibasha”) as well as Katie Wolfe’s Kawa from 2010 (“Nights in the Gardens of Spain”).
Not to be overlooked is this adaptation of “Medicine Woman” (republished in this edition along with Dana Rotberg’s screenplay and essays).
I reviewed it online here:
Ex-patriate Mexican director Dana Rotberg has been tempted back behind the camera by South Pacific Pictures’ John Barnett and by Witi Ihimaera’s novella “Medicine Woman”. The resulting feature, now known as White Lies, is a slow burner of a female-driven drama that packs an emotional wallop. Muso Whirimako Black plays Paraiti, a healer in 1920s Te Urewera, scarred in more ways than one by the colonial forces’ destruction of her village while she was a child.
Reluctantly enlisted to perform a late abortion on the white woman from the big house (Antonia Prebble), she changes her mind and decides to save the baby – a baby whose arrival threatens to rock the carefully balanced relationships between Prebble’s Rebecca, her maid (Rachel House) and the soon-to-return husband and master.
I want to be careful that I don’t reveal too much – even to those who have read Ihimaera’s original story from which there is some divergence. Suffice to say that the long and intense birth scene is one of the most remarkable ever to feature in a New Zealand film – powerful, mystical, painful and redemptive; absent the usual cheap emotional shortcuts. It’s the profound centrepiece of a film where the beginning and end don’t quite reach the same level. I’m not sure why but it might have something to do with the multi-translated dialogue (from Spanish to a kind of stilted colonial English) feeling lifeless compared to the beautiful images on screen.
That Funerals & Snakes review from 2 July 2013 also contained Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (I was not a fan) and Viggo Mortensen playing Spanish-speaking twins in Everybody Has a Plan, which would have been a recommendation here if it was available in New Zealand.
Where to watch White Lies (Tuakiri Huna)
Aotearoa: Digital rental from AroVision or NZ Film Commission On Demand (or Apple if convenience trumps keeping more of the money in New Zealand).
Australia: Digital rental from Apple or Google
Canada, Ireland and UK: Not currently available
USA: Streaming on Prime Video
Further listening
Back when I used to get asked to host screening Q&As, here is me interviewing writer-director Dana Rotberg, composer John Psathas, star Antonia Prebble and Witi Ihimaera himself on the stage at the Light House Cinema in Wellington. This was recorded for the famous podcast, Cinematica. What a time!