Broken English

Broken English is very, very well put together and at times delicious

Broken English, New Zealand, 1996

Communicado / Village Roadshow
Director: Gregor Nicholas
Producer: Robin Scholes
Executive producer: Timothy White
Screenplay: Gregor Nicholas, Johanna Pigott, Jim Salter
Director of photography/Camera operator: John Toon
Production designer: Michael Kane
Editor: David Coulson

With: Rade Serbedzija (Ivan), Aleksandra Vujcic (Nina), Madeline Mcnamara (Mira), Marton Csokas (Darko), Elizabeth Mavric (Vanya), Michael Langley (Zura), Marena Tutugaro (Sashka), Julian Arahanga (Eddie), Jing Zhao (Clara), Li Yan (Wu)

35mm, 96 minutes, R16-contains explicit sex scenes

Sometimes when you make love you make war.

“Nina lives with her family in a Croatian migrant enclave in the suburbs of Auckland. Brought to New Zealand by her mother Mira after the outbreak of war in her homeland, Nina faces a new life in a new land. Nina’s relationship with her domineering father Ivan becomes strained when she falls in love with a young Maori named Eddie. In an attempt to escape the overpowering influence of her father, she marries a Chinese political refugee for money and leaves home. Ivan learns of Nina’s marriage of convenience and is enraged when he discovers Nina is pregnant to Eddie. Desperate to reassert his control over Nina, Ivan risks alienating his entire family when he tries to tear Nina away from the man she loves.”

“I’m glad I saw Gregor Nicholas’s first feature Broken English twice. I was impressed the first time, but a lot more impressed the second. It is very, very well put together and at times delicious, as you’d expect from the man who has made some of the best-looking commercials on your TV as well as several notable short films. He also has a very keen eye for social and psychological nuance and has got excellent performances out of a very talented cast. Apart from Temuera Morrison, in a mature cameo, and Martin Csokas, as a thug with some hope, Rade Serbedzija is the established topweight, at least on his own disputatious turf (which includes Serbia and Croatia), even if he’s not a household spelling mistake here. Industry chatter has it that Julian Arahanga go the most fan mail after Once Were Warriors, and he gets a lot more acting to do this time arounds. His is among the subtlest performances; his character is steady, not-giddy, not boring, but not bloody mad. Praise will be heaped on brilliant novice Aleksandra Vujcic, who has given us Nina, an archetype of the moth-to-the-flame, late-adolescent female subvariant sometimes libellously termed “westy girl”. Like her father, Nina is so impulsive that she’s a danger to everybody around her. At times she is elegantly beautiful, at others kittenish, and sometimes she’s a particularly fascinating slut. She’s a Daddy’s little girl in more ways than one, although it’s his possessiveness that’s incestuous, not his sexuality. I have heard it objected that the Chinese immigrant couple who comprise the subplot and some comic relief are racially stereotypical. Not so: they’re Mr and Mrs Everywong in this context. They’re a very normal couple who want to work hard, paying their way through a hostile system, have a baby, and presumably keep working hard to pay for the little one’s education, DATman, windsurfer… It was the second viewing that made me appreciate the quality of these two adoptive Australians Jing Zhao and Yang Li. The grasping realist Jasmine, the immigration racketeer who exploits people from the bottom of the heap, from whence she herself has clawed her way up to her present petty despotism, presents Barbara Cartwright with an opportunity to shine that she has perfectly realised.” — Metro, September 1996

“Kiwi producer Robin Scholes scored big internationally with Once Were Warriors. His [sic] new outing is more upbeat and not as gruelling, though equally well mounted and with engaging performances… With mostly English dialogue (a few lines in Maori and Croatian are translated), the film has a contemporary feel, mixing the familiar and the exotic, that might allow for breakout beyond the arthouse circuit. The plot summary reads like a melange of the day’s headlines, touching on everything from the fighting in Bosnia to racial tensions, immigration, sex, drugs and family conflict. Ivan, a proud Croat, has been able to flee his homeland with his family thanks to his wife’s being a native New Zealander. Once in Auckland he sets up a drug-smuggling operation to keep the family going while he brings over more relatives. His daughter Nina has a rebellious side that has gotten her a job outside the family business as a waitress at a Chinese restaurant. There she meets the similarly rebellious Eddie, a Maori boy who has left his hometown for the big city. Complicating matters is Nina’s promise to marry Wu sweetheart of her co-worker Clara, so that he can establish citizenship. Wu and Clara are trying to have a “little Kiwi,” but marriage to Nina seems more of a sure thing. As Nina and Eddie try to work out their problems, they must deal with thuggish Ivan, who resolves family problems – such as his adult daughter’s pregnancy – with a baseball bat. Where Once Were Warriors proved rough sledding for some viewers unfamiliar with Maori culture, the culture clash of Broken English should be recognizable to viewers throughout the US. Cast is first-rate, Vujcic and Arahanga engaging as the young lovers, and Serbedzija letting the meance simmer below the surface for long stretches before the inevitable explosion. Story plays out smartly over a tight 92 minutes, with director Gregor Nicholas keeping the action moving at a steady clip, whether in passionate love scene, an aquatic interlude with dolphins or the final showdown. Technical credits are also a plus.” — David M Kimmel, Variety, 16 September 1996

“Ivan, the Croatian father in Broken English, runs his household like a benighted patriarchal fiefdom. His younger daughter is allowed to dress like a hooker. But if her boyfriend lays a finger on her she gets clouted and Ivan and his mates smash up the boyfriend’s car. There are Catholic pictures and crucifixes all over the house. But Ivan just has to see one news report from the war-torn Old Country to be raging arid swearing at Momma about “your f***ing Pope” and his insane ideas on forgiveness. There’s a South Auckland setting for these recent immigrants: a distant view of Mt Wellington in the background, power-lines overhead and next door a Samoan family. Of course, it doesn’t take much to set Ivan muttering under his breath racist curses against his next-door neighbours. Once upon a time, in the days of liberal-preachy film-making, inter-racial love stories carried a curious subtext. The covert message used to be that people are essentially the same everywhere and racial and cultural differences are only superficial things. So just let ethnic minorities conform to our (majority) norms and everything will be rosy. To its immense credit, Gregor Nicholas’s Broken English is far less glib and far more confrontational than this. In Broken English (which Nicholas co-scripted with Johanna Piggott and Jim Salter) the differences between the tribes run deep and are not so easily smoothed over. Ivan is intransigent, bigoted and violent. When his elder daughter Nina takes up with Eddie, a Maori, you know there will be trouble. And there is. Plenty of it, leading to a loud and brutal climax. Of course, there’s a danger in so firmly establishing Ivan’s character so early in the movie. Ivan is played by Rade Serbezija, a major star in what was once called Yugoslavia. Serbezija is such a commanding screen presence, with his swagger and his bellowing, that he often threatens to overwhelm what should be Nina’s and Eddie’s story. It’s harder to respond to Nina and Eddie themselves. They share the most vigorous, explicit, bed-busting sex scene ever devised for a New Zealand movie. But they are curiously bloodless and insubstantial as characters. Newcomer Vujcic is winsome and a little wimpy. Arahanga is treated by the script as a kind of symbol of Maoriness. He plants a whakapapa tree and he makes a speech about how “my family's in this earth”. He also gets to run to the rescue, bare-chested and in slow motion, down a city street. The film sports a subplot wherein Nina contracts a marriage-of-convenience to help a Chinese migrant gain residency. So (with all the Chinese and Croatian faces on screen) there’s nice irony to the way a Maori is the only person who doesn’t speak in broken English. Even so, Eddie fails to grow in stature and Nina remains a plot device. Gregor Nicholas’s direction (served by John Toon’s bright cinematography) is colourful and busy. Flashes of visual brilliance alternate with awkward stuff in the most lumpy texture of any New Zealand feature since Merata Mita’s Mauri. Nina swimming mystically among the dolphins, or Nina and Eddie making love in the afternoon shade of Venetian blinds – you need just add a logo to turn these images into TV commercials. But the busy-ness and sleaze of the inner-city restaurant where Nina works; the long backyard Croatian party, while a Samoan party is going on next door; even the over-the-top finale – all are strikingly watchable. And there are subtleties amongst the overstatement. I assume some sort of symbol for communication is implied by all those cutaway shots to power-lines looping overhead. Still, the main impact of this one is something like the impact of Once Were Warriors: a punchy suburban melodrama with a social conscience. And loud primary colours to rivet the eyes.” — Nicholas Reid, North & South, October 1996

Screening: Broken English screened on 11 June 2008 as part of the Admissions Season.