An island trend

by RICHARD JONES

WE'VE enjoyed a small rush of films with a South Pacific or Kiwi flavour in the past year or so and writer-director Toa Fraser's 'No. 2' continues the trend.

'Sione's Wedding', 'River Queen' and 'The Land Has Eyes', set in Fiji's Rotuma, are films with a Polynesian or Melanesian underlay which spring to mind.

And in 'No. 2' Nanna Maria (Ruby Dee) wakes up one morning in her Wellington home after dreaming about her Fijian childhood. The dream kindles in her a burning desire to arrange a family feast at which Nanna Maria will announce the new head of the family, her successor in fact.

It's the grand children, not the matriarch's immediate children, who ultimately get the responsibility for organising this family bash and they're pretty reluctant at first to accept the challenge.

With Nanna Maria's demands that seafood, a roasted pig and red wine should all be on the menu the grand children do arrange the feast as it turns out, but nothing proceeds to plan.

Nanna allows the Danish girlfriend (Tuba Novotny) of her beloved Tyson (Xavier Horan) to come along and then as the day wears on issues invitations to all the partners of her grand children.

Despite these concessions, the whole party starts to unravel. Nanna is incensed and when she decides to call the whole thing off the younger generation decide that they'll have to run the function a whole lot better.

So they pull out all the stops to give the old lady what she wants. Toa Fraser adapted his award-winning stage play of the same name to form the script for 'No. 2'.

He transformed the original from a one-woman stage production into a screenplay for a large ensemble cast.

The action takes place in one day. This meant that Fraser's cinematographer and lighting director had to work hard to maintain a seamless light during their shoots as the afternoon depicted in the film wore on.

12 December 2006

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