Throughout the year, the Film Archive has presented a regular programme focusing on NZ women film makers in partnership with
Women in Film and Television   Join us for the last event this year with this classic thriller by Gaylene Preston

Director, Gaylene Preston will introduce the film and be available for a Q&A at its conclusion

Please join us from 6pm for networking, Gaylene will introduce the film at 6.45pm and the screening will commence at 7pm

Mr Wrong
1985, 35mm, 88 minutes, PG–contains violence

A thoroughly spooky good time

The story of a young woman who buys a haunted car, an old Jaguar, which she thinks is a bargain. Her first doubts occur when she is driving on a remote country road. She hears strangulated gasps coming from the back seat. But the seat is empty...

"Mr Wrong skilfully succeeds at both self- reflexivity and social comment. In addition, it's a superbly entertaining thriller. Its tight and well- scripted plot exploits many of the cliches and conventions of the genre, while simultaneously turning an incisive and perceptive eye on the ideological substructure of those very conventions. Preston spotlights the inbuilt sexism of the genre and illuminates its uncomfortable preoccupations with power, sex and death, and some of the nastier links between that unholy trinity that permeates the dominant ethos" - (Jo Seton, "Meg and the Space Invaders - Mr. Wrong as a Feminist Thriller", Illusions, no.2, winter 1986)

"In some of the best and brightest New Zealand documentaries, Gaylene Preston has exhibited a flair for demonstrating that things are not always as we commonly perceive them, so it’s not surprising that her first fiction feature may sound like a contradiction in terms; a thriller with very little in the way of explicit blood-letting or special effects. Heather Bolton is perfectly cast as Meg, a nice gal from the country who moves to the city and declares her autonomy by buying herself a lovely large Jag. Gradually she is forced to acknowledge that this car is making some most uncarlike noises and that it’s making her the object of the attentions of a thoroughly unpleasant young man who seems to materialise out of thin air. It would be more than unusually unfair to reveal much more of the engrossing plot which is divulged in true thriller/ghost story fashion and makes ample use of its many red herrings, each of which has a neat ideological kickback. Thriller expectations are juxtaposed and interplayed with the expectations and fears of everyday life with which Preston displays a genial, perceptive familiarity. As the mystery thickens, Mr. Wrong builds up into a funny, nervy funk. What our heroine’s most scared of is paranoia and we’re given every reason to identify with her every inch of the way as she refuses to become anybody’s victim. Preston kids along the thriller conventions she clearly enjoys, springing twists in them and interrogating the genre for its inbuilt sexism all the while treating her audience to a thoroughly spooky good time. — Bill Gosden, New Zealand Film Festival, 1985