Home sweet home

Jinx Sister - 4/5

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FILM REVIEW: Bedtime stories FILM REVIEW: Twilight Ghost Town Caramel Crude intentions Director's delusion Between rock and a hard place Give them a hand Reefer badness Censor's grip a choke-hold

THERE ARE a few complaints to get out of the way first. Jinx Sister, a local meditation on sisterly love and coming home, fits together awkwardly at times.

There is one moment too many when the brittle, prickly Laura (Wiseman), who has adopted the accent, attire and attitude of an LA native after 10 years away, peers guiltily around the bushes to gawk at her married, earth-mother, pregnant sister Maree (Nash). She gives the cute Maori guy at the cheap motel (Rawiri) one too many insecure, interested glances.

The start is confusing, intending to be Los Angeles but feeling like Ponsonby because of the two New Zealand actresses on screen. And if you know Auckland geography, Laura walked one hell of a long way on a drunken, tearful night. And it has the worst title since that one involving bananas. But the tightly scripted Jinx Sister demonstrates that skin-crawling, fish-out-of-water feel that plagues Kiwi OE returnees so much more tangibly than a dozen documentaries filmed by sunburnt crews with NZ On Air cash.

The shots taken out of Laura's taxi presumably on digital video on the way from the airport convey that sense of familiar possibility, allowable confinement and home sweet home in a way I had not seen before. The trees, shops and roads all looked like the suburbs of a foreigner proudly showing us where she came from. Quite an achievement for Manurewa.

Laura, in nothing that is not tight or short or low, is brusque with the natives she requests the "best room" in a concrete block motel ("ragged around the edges but clean like me", says scene-stealing Rawiri Paratene's motelier). They respond with typical bemused phlegmatism.

Laura gets reacquainted with meat pies, crappy pubs and South Auckland markets. And her sister, with whom she has an awful lot of family business to work through.

A rewarding film.

JINX SISTER (R13 sex scenes, offensive language) starring Sara Wiseman, Rachel Nash, Jarod Rawiri. Directed by Athina Tsoulis. 100 mins. Opens Thursday.
THE PITCH: Coming home.
WATCH OUT FOR: "I wouldn't wish my life on anyone."

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