Friday new releases: 3 May 2024

The Moon Is Upside Down, Back to Black and Golda are in cinemas

Once again, limited session times conspire against me getting to everything. I am told by a colleague that missing out on the ultra-violent Boy Kills World means I am the only one involved in that film who actually dodged a bullet.

The marketing around the new Aotearoa bleak-comedy The Moon Is Upside Down is off-putting and the film is certainly not going to be to everyone’s tastes, but I hope it finds an audience.

I’m sure it will overseas because the sensibility of writer-director Loren Taylor’s work is very European. I saw someone mention Kaurismäki as a touchstone and that’s a smart observation – deadpan comedy with an undertone of sadness, loneliness and missed connections.

The film is about three women from very different backgrounds whose stories intersect – you wouldn’t go as far as to say ‘collide’ – in the grim emptiness of the central North Island.

Natalia (Victoria Haralabidou) is a Siberian mail order bride off to start a new life in (did I hear someone say?) Mangaweka. Faith (Elizabeth Hawthorn) is an empty-nester living in a plush inner city apartment, distractedly inspecting investment flats bought by her husband before he headed off overseas. And Taylor herself plays Briar (great name for someone who is a little bit prickly). She’s an anaesthetist in an online relationship with Tim (Robbie Magasiva).

Natalia soon finds out that Mac’s garage and service station, and indeed Mac himself (Jemaine Clement), is not what it is cracked up to be. She was promised a café to manage but it’s just a garage full of junk. And Mac’s sister, Hilary (Robyn Malcolm), seems to be altogether too involved in the whole business.

One of Faith’s inspections reveals the deteriorating corpse of a tenant with no family or friends, so she takes it upon herself to try and send them off with some dignity.

Meanwhile, Briar’s attempt to have a romantic weekend away with Tim go from bad to worse as unexpected menstruation, travel sickness and roadkill conspire to get in their way.

Refreshingly frank about sexual matters – at least compared with most New Zealand films – The Moon Is Upside Down also has a great eye for our often terrible domestic interior decoration and our sandpaper approach to relationships.

I’ve seen the film described in a couple of places as star-studded but that’s just a way to describe the fact that the film is full of the same old faces from the Kiwi repertory company.

I was going to complain about that – can’t we find anyone new? – but it turns out that they are all playing satisfactorily against type, or at least just enough against type for it to feel fresh. Magasiva used to be a hunky leading man – and may well be again – but here he is the opposite of alpha. Rachel House amusingly downplays her brief role and Ginette McDonald steals her scene simply by being present.

For once, we can sense a New Zealand director asking for less and getting more as a result.

After a night at the theatre once my companion asked, where would writers be without birds in cages? There’s one in The Moon Is Upside Down and a canary makes a regular appearance in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biography of Amy Winehouse, Back To Black.