This is a beautiful study of a character and her culture. Slow moving, light on story, completely in a world of its own. In places it reminded me of The Piano (Keisha Castle-Hughes was discovered by the same casting scout who found Anna Paquin for that movie, and The Piano too is set in New Zealand).

Superb images, superb score by Lisa Gerrard, and superb performances from the whole cast but particularly Keisha Castle-Hughes, who was completely rightfully nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. Her scene in which she breaks down because her grandfather isn’t there should bring tears to even the most hardened eyes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2004 at 5:40 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as animals, cuties, gender, Maori, New Zealand, whale. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.