Defiant acts of caring

Screenwriter Maddie Dai says it was genuinely astounding to watch her words come to life.

Girls can do anything, when they do it together, a new Kiwi film argues.

Close on the heels of the report into abuse in care, new Kiwi film We Were Dangerous arrives in cinemas with a story of surviving those very same challenges.

The film, which opens at the New Zealand International Film Festival before a general release in cinemas, is directed by Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu and written by Maddie Dai.

It tells the story of three young women sent to an institution for delinquent girls on an isolated island in 1954.

It is Dai’s first feature film screenplay and adds another remarkable entry in a CV that already lists cartooning success, art director awards and work in several television writers’ rooms.

Dai answered a few questions from her base in London.

Q Why did you first decide to tackle this story and in this way?

A I was living in London in lockdown and desperate to go home, and writing a movie set in New Zealand seemed at least one way to get there. I felt sure the MIQ lottery would look favourably on a returning young screenwriter. This delusional attitude works best when you know nothing about the film industry, as I did. I was a dilettante stuck in my bedroom, it was my first film script, I emailed it to my favourite production company ... and truly it is wild that it worked. Homesickness is such a powerful creative force. I wanted to write some version of a buddy comedy with spirited teenage girls at the centre. The kind of funny, generous, irreverent, women I grew up with; my sisters, cousins, aunts and peers. Additionally, I had a great-great-grandfather who was imprisoned on Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington, and that seemed interesting to me; both so close to civilisation, yet entirely removed. And I loved the movie Chicken Run. Those were the main ingredients.

Q Why approach the story from the viewpoint of three young women?

A I suppose it’s a dynamic I know and love. I’m the youngest of three girls. I have so many wonderful women in my life. And then, when we were three women trying to make this film (director Jose, producer Morgan [Waru], and shout out to honourable delinquent girl [and executive producer] Carthew [Neal] who always let us yap away), there was an added layer of poignancy. I think I enjoy stories with three characters, there are always shifting dynamics and somehow a built in sense of camaraderie. I felt teenage girls get a bad rap in film and TV. Often petulant, whiney, overly self conscious. If they’re opinionated, it’s often snarky and rude. If they’re friends, it’s often short lived. I suppose we all have the capacity for a little petulance here and there, but I also felt that when the teenage girls I was surrounded by growing up were also so brilliant, funny, capable of such depth of feeling and a sense of adventure, I was more interested in trying to capture that.

Q Young women have had their life choices circumscribed in all sorts of cultures and all sorts of settings, but is the experience of young women in a colonial settler society in any way different and particular?

A One thing that interested me about the time I examined (New Zealand in the 1950s) was how young women were simultaneously vulnerable to corruption, and the ones believed to be doing the corrupting. The Mazengarb Report was sent to every household in 1954 and features in the film. It blamed the perceived promiscuity of the nation’s youth on "working mothers, the ready availability of contraceptives, and young women enticing men to have sex". They paid particular attention to "orgies in the Hutt Valley", which gets a shout out in the film. It seems fascinating to me that young women can simultaneously be the victim and the threat. They have so much "power", and yet need to be protected within the "safety" of marriage, homes, and institutions.

Q The film happens to be coming out just as the The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry has reported back, which you can't have anticipated but does that put the film in a particular light?

Manaia Hall (Daisy), Erana James (Nellie) and Nathalie Morris (Lou) in We Were Dangerous.

A As I wrote I read accounts of abuse in state care from the recent inquiry, as testimonies were published along the way, and its horrible details, like the humiliation of cutting hair as punishment, came through. There are so many corners of New Zealand’s history that are dark, devastating and tough to contend with, but it’s so crucial for us all to examine the parts of our culture and systems that encouraged or allowed this abuse. The treatment of people on the fringes, and the way they had been removed from society — isolated, contained, silenced — to "protect" the homogenous mainstream is such a pernicious but constant trend, and a theme explored in the film. When you’re overwhelmed with such staggering numbers of people who experienced abuse, I think remembering the humanity of the people at the centre of this tragedy is so important.

Q The director's father had first-hand experience of surviving state care, did that add an extra layer of immediacy to the script as it was being brought to life?

A We did early readings of the script with people who had endured abuse in state care, and that added so much humanity and colour to the stories. And I found it incredibly poignant and moving that our director’s father was present at the reading. Of course, we all know that the immediacy of such pain creates such depth to the story. The tragedy is not historic or hypothetic, it’s present and alive.

I think talking to people who endured this abuse also gave us permission to see their humour and their friendships as tools of resistance and survival. We heard hilarious tales of girls using the sanitary pad incinerators to light their cigarettes, and some great impressions of their own matrons.

Q How was the experience of seeing your first feature film script taking shape?

A It’s unbelievably surreal, and at every moment I learned so much. I did my career out of order — I hadn’t even done a short film, no film school, just an eight-lesson night class in screenwriting — so the entire process was new to me. Nothing as humbling as seeing an actor struggle through a wordy line that sounded witty in your head, I wanted to interrupt the whole proceeding to tell them to throw the whole thing out. And nothing as thrilling as seeing so many talented people step up to help bring something to life that for a while had just been rolling round your end. It’s scary and, at times, tough seeing something you had cared for so much get tossed about in the stormy seas of film-making. But I also feel so lucky to have collaborators that really, truly cared about the story, and worked so hard to bring it to life.

Q How was it watching performers such as Rima Te Wiata and Erana James step into your characters?

A Genuinely astounding. I highly recommend it as an experience. Absolute pros and so generous with their talents, everything they touched was improved.

Q Did Ōtamahua Island live up to its casting?

A As you can imagine, a casting call for an island in New Zealand is a competitive business, and there were many phenomenal talents. Ōtamahua rose to the occasion admirably.