Vai

This movie is a mess. I couldn't keep up with the Vai character because they used actresses who looked very different to each other, and supposedly older versions looked younger. When Vai's grand daughter coincidentally called Moana is off to NZ, she's older again than she would have been to start school there. Professional film reviewers say it's consistent etc, but I think they were caught up in the token feminism surrounding the advertising of this film. I'm a female and I don't like movies just because I'm told they're about female empowerment - when the main character gave up so easily on an education she earned when people were trying to offer help she wouldn't take. Then making her grand daughter go off for the same education away from her family and support (repeating history) is supposedly empowerment.

Positive reviewers were fooled by your typical nostalgic island singing and really bad "traditional" dancing and the colourful costumes, views and ocean (the best actor in this film).

A beautiful film depicting cultures of the Pacific island.

In their follow up to 2017's Waru, Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton have gathered a small army of incredible female Pasifika filmmakers for Vai - an emotionally profound piece of work that is unlike anything I've ever seen onscreen.

Told in what is essentially eight vignettes, Vai explores the various stages in which Vai comes of age - as a young girl to a young woman to an elder. Each vignette features a different version, so to speak, of Vai - as she exists in different times and different Pacific Islands. If this sounds unwieldy, I assure you it isn't - each vignette flows beautifully into the next and each narrative is succinct and precise.

The film is beautiful to look at. Drew Sturge, the film's director of photography, beautifully captures the different textures that the setting of each vignette offers. From the deep blues of the sea in Fiji to the pale browns of a small Tongan village to the lush greens of Samoa. These places feel absolutely alive. Much like Waru, much of each vignette is presented in one continuous take. Although there are a few instances where the film deviates from this choice, it never calls attention to itself. Also of note is Lauren King's mesmerizing score. Used only sparingly throughout but effectively and never intrusively. Performances are exceptional across the board, young and old, each of the actresses brings an exceptional level of nuance and heart to Vai as well as making her their own in each of their respective vignettes.

I would say this is the best film I've seen so far this year, and a film I would dare compare to Richard Linklater's Boyhood or Barry Jenkins' Moonlight. It is such a profound character study and also a deep dive into identity and the relationship between identity and our culture. How much our own identities are formed by our culture, the places we live and the places we came from. Each vignette explores a specifically different Pasifika identity, and in doing so highlights the value of ancestry and cultural heritage to one's own identity, in a way that I can't say I've seen in a film before. Vai, no matter where, how, or at what age she exists in time, is shaped by those who came before her and where they came from.

I found myself profoundly moved by Vai, and left the cinema invigorated in a way that I hadn't been coming out of a film in a while. This is a film that makes me proud of our industry, and motivated as a filmmaker.

A marvellous look into cultures - diverse yet drawn together by undeniable bonds - that all too seldom appear in film. Unfortunately, the storylines are sophomoric and the cinematography strictly by the book. There is a sense that the directors felt their artistic freedom constrained and were mostly phoning it in.

After a strong first vignette, the second is particularly weak, with inevitable walkouts - a pity because once the film passes through the more cringe-inducing phases of Vai's life and we meet her in middle age and as an elder, her strength finally begins to draw the film together. Seeing four generations of her family is particularly touching.

The film was promoted as "ambitious", and in some ways it is. However, if the directors had been given complete control over their vignettes (within the parameters broadly required for the overarching story), we could have seen a truly daring work.

Obvious parallels with Moana (1926). There are many stories to be told here. Let us hope this is not the last attempt to do so.