THIS first Samoan feature film begins with Saili harvesting mature taro growing around the gravestones of his parents.
Then he lops new plantings nearby. How can this be? Can a farmer afford to destroy plants from which he earns his livelihood? Saili lives in the house of Vaaiga and her teenaged daughter Laita. The local women intensely dislike Vaaiga ever since she came to the community 17 years earlier.
After the film I spoke with the pastor at Canberra’s Samoan church, who assured me that it accurately reflects Samoan village life. I’d like to think that it might gather a respectable audience in Canberra, especially beyond the Samoan community. It’s not ethnographic cinema. It doesn’t use mainstream cinematic values to tell its quite moving story. The cinematic values that it does present are uncompromising and delightful. Writer/director Tusi Tanasese eventually gives satisfactory explanations for all the dramatic questions his compassionate film raises.At Greater Union and Limelight
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