A young Maori woman fights to keep her identity in mid-19th century England.
Grimmfest says: Taratoa Stappard’s literate and elegantly brutal debut feature offers a razor sharp reimagining of the classic Gothic Melodrama; confronting directly the darker realities that so often lurk just beneath the surface of the baroque and stylised narratives. There are nods to Du Maurier’s REBECCA, and maybe to J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s UNCLE SILAS, but this is primarily a riff on JANE EYRE (perhaps by way of Jean Rhys’ classic reimaging and deconstruction of Bronte, WIDE SARGASSO SEA), which taps into the Bluebeard myth that might have been one of Bronte’s own inspirations, and fuses this with horrific historical facts about the treatment of indigenous people in the region, to offer a nightmarish exploration of Colonial exploitation and cultural genocide. There’s an element of fellow New Zealander Jane Campion’s repurposing and reclaiming of period costume drama, too, a desire to challenge the dominant voices, and provide context and contrast. But this is very much Stappard’s film, and marks him immediately as a major cinematic voice. He knows his Gothic tropes, both literary and cinematic, and finds new life and dark energy in them, conjuring up the lush, seductive visuals of the classic period melodrama via outstanding production design, strong location work, and gorgeous cinematography, even as he subverts and challenges it. Beautifully and subtly played, with perfectly pitched lead performances from Toby Stephens and the extraordinary Ariana Osborne, this is a slowburning study in the suffocation of identity, which gradually exposes, the monsters lurking beneath all of that mannered, middle class politeness and dominating whiteness. It is the whiteness of bone; the whiteness of death.