No. 2

A warmly observed drama about a Fijian-Kiwi matriarch gathering her discordant clan around one last fete

No.2, New Zealand, 2006

Director/writer: Toa Fraser
Producers: Tim White, Philippa Campbell, Lydia Livingstone
Production company: Colonial Encounters & Southern Light Films
Director of photography: Leon Narbey
Production designer: Phil Ivey
Costumes: Kirsty Cameron
Editor: Chris Plummer
Composer: Don McGlashan
Casting: Diana Rowan

With: Ruby Dee, Tuva Novotny, Taungaroa Emile, Xavier Horan, Rene Naufahu

35mm, PG, 94 minutes

The heart has gone out of Nanna Maria's family. There are no parties – they don't even fight anymore. Inspired by a dream of her childhood back in Fiji, Nanna demands that her grandchildren put on a big feast at which she will name her successor. The grandchildren reluctantly turn up, but as the day progresses their preparations unravel into chaos and an outraged Nanna calls the whole thing off. That's when everyone realises they have to pull out all the stops and give the crazy old lady what she wants, and what they all need. Infused with the heat and vibrancy of the South Pacific, No.2 is a big-hearted, exuberant story about what it takes to bring family together.

New Zealand playwright Toa Fraser makes a smooth transition to the screen directing No. 2, an adaptation of his 2000 stage work. This warmly observed drama about a Fijian-Kiwi matriarch gathering her discordant clan around one last fete is formulaic at its core: One can guess grandma's fate from the start, but only after, all wounds have been healed and every narrative string tied. Still, assured handling and an appealing cast make this a deserving crowd-pleaser (it won the dramatic World Cinema audience award at Sundance) … Ruby Dee plays octogenarian Nana Maria, whose ramshackle longtime house is perched on Auckland's Mt. Raskil. Widowed, she now shares the abode with two adult grandchildren – heavy-drinking but loyal Erasmus and quietly soulful single mother Charlene – and Charlene's young son. One night Nana wakes up, then wakes everybody else up, demanding they orchestrate a "great feast" for the family that very day. It's a daunting request, given various factions aren't speaking to each other and Nana's own two sons are the most bitterly divided of all – from each other and from her... Adding more tension to her beleaguered grandchildren's day is the announcement that at the party's climax Nana will reveal her successor, who will presumably inherit the house. News of the surprise celebration spreads to other relations, including the children with whom Nana has severed communication, sons Percy and John, along with the latter's spouse Auntie Cat. The snobby brothers loathe each other, yet they can't resist the pull of discovering just what Nana is up to. Natch, the long day's crises, spats and revelations mellow by sunset. Despite the relatively brief running time and large character roll, Fraser is able to make this evolution seem relatively natural and emotionally satisfying. Adding a layer of emotional insight are brief flashbacks to Nana's youth on Fiji, where her noble family lived a charmed existence sorely missed once a philandering hubby moved them to New Zealand after WWII. Dee's aristocratic air and commanding theatricality are put to fine use, while she also limns Nana's physical frailty and a possible streak of senility. The twenty-to-thirty-something grandkids are played by a sensationally attractive lot who subtly convey the mixed emotions and painful parental histories Fraser wisely refrains from spelling out too bluntly... Don McGlashan contributes a lovely original score.” — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 22 January 2006

“From the moment Feestyle’s The Medicine scores the arrival of Soul – blinged out with a Raskill chain and Raskill number-plate – great Kiwi music energises No 2. Like the big-hearted, brilliant Feelstyle, it’s hard not to like Toa Fraser’s film. Fraser has an infectious enthusiasm for the people and the place. He co-wrote Vincent Ward’s traumatised, beautiful River Queen; this is more proof he understands how Kiwi culture ticks. No 2 follows the day of a Polynesian whanau preparing for a feast where their matriarch Nanna Maria (Spike Lee favourite Ruby Dee) will name her successor. Fraser adapts his stunning play, which starred Madeleine Sami in a virtuoso turn as all nine characters. As his name suggests, Soul is a spirited, sensitive, touching character. No 2, a celebration of communitarian warmth in Mt Roskill, features a smorgasbord of amiable performances… Like River Queen, elements of No 2 could have been honed, but what’s here has plenty to recommend it; as audience reactions at Sundance, and the warm, cackling response in Wellington, indicate. Shot by the wonderful Leon Narbey, the film makes effective use of the Raskill urbanscape. In the vein of Hone Tuwhare, Fraser is a people’s artist and imaginatively juxtaposes highbrow classical with Polynesian vernacular. The landscape has the presence of a strong character in many of New Zealand’s films. Given the extraordinary renaissance of New Zealand music, it’s about time it was used this effectively cinematically. Along with Don McGlashan’s original compositions, there’s Hollie Smith’s Bathe in the River [composed by McGlashan], King Kapisi’s Raise Up, Feelstyle’s Break It To Pieces, Che Fu’s Hold Tight and Waka and more. No 2 finished cathartically with Trinity Roots’ magnificent national anthem Home, Land and Sea.” — Alexander Bisley, Dominion Post, 17 February 2006

“Just as Harry Sinclair’s Topless Women Talk About Their Lives had a sight gag about German fans on a Piano pilgrimage to Karekare, so, a decade on, Toa Fraser’s warm and enjoyable film No 2 has a reflexive joke about Lord of the Rings tourists. Uncle Percy is a tour bus driver pointing out, from the top of Mt Roskill, Auckland’s other volancoes. There’s Mt Eden, Mt Albert … and then a German voice pipes up: “Where is Mt Doom?” Somewhere near Hamilton, Percy says. Fraser’s joke isn’t just funnier than Sinclair’s, it reverberates more fully: his film is drenched in affection for Mt Roskill – a suburb that Fraser was puzzled to learn was long derided as Auckland’s most boring. It doesn’t look like it here. So, Fraser’s Mt Doom joke might say: who needs fantasy mountains when so much emotional life has been and can be invested in the real thing? Roskill isn’t a rich suburb, but Fraser, who adapts his own, and the great New Zealand cinematographer Leon Narbey forge a kind of sleepy paradise from its palm trees and red-tile roofs, its golden weather, its streets free of crime and even traffic. Actual locations and landmarks are well used. The film feels effortlessly representative of the suburb’s ethnic-melting-pot quality, the one that led Tze Ming Mok to say, in Landfall a couple of years ago, that Roskill is the gateway to the future: with one key exception, the main family is played by Maori and Pacific actors, there are Chinese and Indian characters, and there’s even a white guy. It’s a shame, give recent mosque defacements and kneejerk Muslim fear, that there aren’t Middle Eastern characters in this good-natured vision of the new New Zealand, although the intention might have been thee: apparently an Iraqi girl disappeared from an early draft. It might seem like a small detail, but as someone who lives about a kilometre or two north of No 2’s main location, I realised that Fraser knows what he’s talking about as soon as I saw, early in his movie, a brief shot of one of the elderly, turbaned and long-bearded Indian guys that you see trudging, or sometimes cycling, alone around the streets of Roskill and Sandringham, as determined as polar explorers. Fraser knows Roskill like Spike Lee knows Brooklyn. If it sounds as if setting is being talked about at the expense of plot, it’s because Fraser’s plot is a contrivance to communicate his message about the value of family and the warmth of community. Fijian-born matriarch Nanna Maria wants her family to organise a feast – “like in Sicily” – at which she will name her successor. “Sicily’s in Europe and we’re in Mt Roskill,” says Hibiscus, but as Fraser lays Italian opera singing across the soundtrack, you can see that he’s working on eradicating the distance: bickering clans are the same the world over. Nanna Maria’s adult grandson Erasmus gathers the relatives and although the bustling cast means we’re deprived of some back stories, individual performances do stand out: besides Naufahu, Terei and McDowell, there is lovely work from Tanea Heke as the disapproving Aunty Cat, Taungaroa Emile as young Soul… Pushing that Roskill identification hard, Soul has “the Raskill” licence plate. And this is the kind of film in which someone gets called Soul for a reason – the kind of film in which every bit of sentimental meaning is wring out of Trinity Roots’ unofficial national anthem Home, Land and Sea. But does Fraser’s love letter to his heartland persuade us? Pretty much, thanks to a couple of brave and touching late developments: one connecting Soul and a neighbour, and directly pointing to Roskill as the future; the other meaningful camera movement from the ever-impressive Narbey.” — Philip Matthews, Listener, 11 February 2006

“New Zealand-Fijian writer and director Toa Fraser could not have asked for a better launch for No 2, his first film. A day after it premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah, it was accepted to compete at the Berlin Film Festival, one of Europe’s most significant. Speaking from Sundance shortly after No 2’s third sell-out screening, Fraser said there was a buzz about the film before he arrived… No 2 is one of 16 foreign films competing for the World Cinema Prize.” — NZ Herald, 24 January 2006

“Toa Fraser’s debut feature film No 2 has won the World Cinema Audience Award – Dramatic at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.” — 30 January 2006 www.scoop.co.nz

“One of the things No 2 is about is the language of hospitality. We’re back in New Zealand now – Ms. Dee is back in New York – but I want to thank the Sundance Film Festival and all the many people who came to see our movie for showing us incredible generosity and hospitality – and for giving us the ultimate honour of welcome: this prize. As Ruby Dee said from New York earlier today, ‘We are each other. We have to know who we are so we can have a greater stake in who we have become. This prize is more meaningful that you can imagine.’ “So, from a humble backyard in Mt. Roskill in the Pacific, on behalf of the hundreds of people that worked on and invested in the movie, we want to thank the audiences of the Sundance Film Festival, for coming and celebrating life with us. God bless Mt. Raskil.” — Toa Fraser, 29 January 2006, www.scoop.co.nz

Screenings: No. 2 screened on 16 May 2007 as part of the Arts Foundation Laureates season, it honours the work of Laureate Don McGlashan