Constance

To categorise Constance as a psychological drama is accurate on one level, but the movie is richly multi-level. You feel as if you have seen a real movie.

Constance, New Zealand, 1984

Mirage Films
Director: Bruce Morrison
Producer: Larry Parr
Writer: Jonathan Hardy
Production Supervisor: Dorthe Scheffman
Director of Photography: Kevin Hayward
Camera Operator: Paul Leach
Editor: Phillip Howe
Production designer: Richard Jeziorny
Costume designer: Judith Crozier
Composer: John Charles
First assistant director: Murray Newey
Second assistant director: Michael Bourchier
Third assistant director: Tim Coddington
Production assistant: Stewart Main

With: Donogh Rees (Constance), Shane Briant (Simon), Judie Douglass (Sylvia), Martin Vaughan (Alexander), Donald MacDonald (John), Mark Wignall (Richard), Graham Harvey (Errol), Hester Joyce (Noeline)

PG-contains violence, 102 minutes

“I want my life to be like a novel I write myself.”

Constance, a beautiful young Aucklander and passionate cinema-goer has one dream – to leave her mediocre, post-war life in Auckland and become a famous Hollywood Star.

Constance is a young woman growing up in the ultra conservative post-war years in Auckland. She is a passionate cinemagoer and is determined that there must be more to life than her own gentle career as a primary school teacher. She leaves her job and for awhile amuses herself by encouraging the attentions of two eager young men, Errol Barr and Richard Lewis. Errol is the dutiful son of the all-powerful Mrs Barr – the very doyenne of Auckland high society – while Richard is the only child of a clergyman. Constance flirts with her suitors at dancing lessons and tennis parties but inevitably she finds them no match for her screen idols. She longs to play other roles than wife, mother or social organizer. Constance is not sorry when Mrs Barr eventually relieves her of her duties as Secretary of the Leprosy Fund, and as a companion to Errol. Constance seizes the opportunity to pursue her own dreams and strike a blow at the high society matriarchs when she seduces the guest of honour at the Barr’s annual garden party. Simon Malyon is an expatriate New Zealander and a famous Hollywood stills photographer. When he asks Constance to pose for him it seems that an exciting new world will be opened up to her. Instead Malyon brings Constance face to face with another very hard and very cold reality.

“Before there was television providing an evening out at home a real evening out at the pictures often meant a live show before the movie. Constance begins with an excellent reconstruction of such an evening. The Civic in its heyday, before its untimely twinning, is the venue for the New Zealand premiere of Gilda (1946). The army searchlights are dowsed and the live show is in full swing. The Civic has never looked better. The show is spectacular and the reconstructed Wurlitzer reminds us again of its loss to Auckland. We get large chunks of Gilda, which is always great to watch, as we join in to Constance’s life. It is a fusion of movies, fashion magazine and dreams with her family and acquaintances. The Judith Crozier costumes in Constance are stunning. It is a very clever idea to use one character with costumes extended stylistically from their period. They make Constance stand out from the other characters. But more than that they give her an unreal quality that verges on science fiction. It is a clever device, especially since no-one in the movie thinks she is anything other than a very smartly-dressed young lady. Judie Dogulass, as her mother, is equally good. The relationship between the two is always strained. Constance was her father’s girl. Their relationship was like a loving affair. On his death the suppressed rivalry of mother and daughter changes to a dependency on Constance. The mother psychologically takes the toll of her grief and becomes a virtual recluse. Her mind is altered. During this period, Constance is the breadwinner and her dreams and hopes have a normal rationale. Later she will have her own reaction to grief. I am only a very recent convert to Lee Grant but now she can do no wrong. Her Mrs Barr, organizer of a high society leprosy fund, is a great cameo, as is the very brief appearance of Beryl Te Wiata. She hovers as a headmistress in her most lethal predatory manner. The cast reads as a New Zealand Who’s Soon Going to Become A Real Who… Visually, the locations are well chosen. Auckland’s period architecture has never been used so well. The interiors are just as interesting. Designer Richard Jeziorny is someone to really watch out for. To categorise Constance as a psychological drama is accurate on one level, but the movie is richly multi-level. You feel as if you have seen a real movie. I shall watch out for director Bruce Morrison in the future.” — John Parker, Metro, March 1984

“Self-honesty is one of life’s most difficult achievements. People eventually bend rules, repress ideals and compromise principles. They conform. For some, like Constance, a young woman growing up in Auckland’s 1940s society, conformity becomes an ugly self-deception. But the price of the struggle for individualism and self-respect is high, made at the cost of dreams, loneliness, and social and family alienation. Constance demands of its creators precise insight and sensitivity, delicate artistry and professional skill. This difficult challenge was accept by Bruce Morrison (director), Jonathan Hardy (writer), Kevin Hayward (photography), Phillip Howe (editor) and Richard Jeziorny (design). Their stylish production is a triumph. And their star, Auckland actress Donogh Rees, has created the most absorbing character yet in New Zealand film. Director Morrison, a New Zealand television producer-director (Red Deer, Profiles), makes his feature debut with Constance, and he is a perfectionist. He assembles his scenes in a series of polished cameos with painstaking attention to authentic 1940s Auckland detail, music, costumes and mood. Three of his sequences demand special care because they dramatically sharpen Constance’s evolving personality, setting the scenes for her next steps. The first such sequence is a socialist garden party where Constance does verbal battle with the subtle, socially skilled doyenne of Auckland society, announcing to all that she is setting herself apart from their values. The film’s most significant sequence is a harrowing rape on which the whole production pivots. It is crucial that this sequence be handled correctly because it is the rape of Constances’ ideals, hopes and emerging individuality. Morrison succeeds magnificently, drawing out the build-up in a mood of menace and dawning horror. Morrison’s third important sequence, and the film’s best, is a family confrontation with prospective in-laws after Constance, in a state of numbed limbo following the rape, has accepted a marriage proposal from a friend. Here we see Rees in her finest moments. She is so good. Constance is not just a film of the 1940s, nor is it peculiar just to Auckland, for it applies today and in any Western country.” — Auckland Star, 17/3/1984

“Imagine that it's 1984 and you go to the cinema dreaming that you're Rita Hayworth, then wake up next morning and find that you are in suburban Auckland, New Zealand - all cheery, scrubbed faces and neat aspirations. A daunting movie subject, which could easily have turned into whimsy and nostalgia; but thanks to a magnificently realised performance by Rees, the film's stab at the tone of the great post-war melodrama is an almost total success. From minor social peccadilloes via debauchery to complete self-abasement, Constance clings to her dream until it destroys her. Combining a real sense of style with some genuine emotion, the film is lush and exhilarating.” — http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/69644/Constance.html

Constance screened on 12 November 2008 as part of a season titled 'troubled teens'.