Cinema
Vigil
Vincent Ward · 1984
Synopsis
Toss, eleven, lives on an isolated farm in a misty valley with her father, her mother, Elizabeth, and her grandfather, Birdie. She sees her father fall while trying to save a ewe, and a stranger bring the body out of the bush. This man, Ethan, a hunter, settles at the farm, becomes her mother's lover and helps the grandfather build a strange machine. Toss sees him as an invader and sets her mind on driving him out of her valley.
Context
The first feature film of its director, on a screenplay written with Graeme Tetley, it took him five years of work. He searched for thousands of kilometres across his valley and visited schools for two years before finding the performer of Toss, Fiona Kay; the shoot took place on a remote farm in northern Taranaki, with Bill Kerr, Penelope Stewart and Frank Whitten, under the cinematography of Alun Bollinger and to a score by Jack Body. The critic Richard King saw in it Tarkovsky transported to Taranaki.
Who it is for
About ninety minutes, in English, released in France under its original title. Little dialogue: the landscape matters as much as the characters.
Prizes and reception
The first New Zealand film in competition at Cannes, in 1984, greeted with an ovation; top prizes at Madrid and Prades the same year.
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