Film Review

Written and Directed by: Harold Brodie

Cinematography: Renaud Maire

Principal Actors: Jordan Selwyn, Rebecca Gibney, Mikaila Hutchinson, Bonnie Soper

Studio: Arkles Entertainment

Screening Date: September 19, 2009 Kansas International Film Festival

Film length: 90 minutes

Rating: unrated

Reviewed by Deborah Ground Buckner

The Map Reader is a coming-of-age film set in small-town New Zealand. Sixteen-year-old Michael (Jordan Selwyn) leads a lonely life with his alcoholic mother, Amelia (Rebecca Gibney) who has never been able to let go of being abandoned by her husband. Her drinking creates problems with her work and tensions for Michael, who never knows what condition she will be in when he returns home from school, but she has also given Michael the great gift of a love of geography. Flashbacks reveal the young Michael (Braydon Kearns) and Amelia repeating the mantra: “I can go anywhere with a map. I can do anything if I know something about a place.”

Michael's room is papered with maps, and every horizontal surface holds a globe. His mother tells him stories of places where his father might be. Yet, when asked where he wants to travel, he has no answer.

Mostly content to be alone with his maps and his musings, Michael seems uncomfortable with his school friends and their favorite pastime of stalking the attractive young blind woman, Mary (Bonnie Soper) in the neighborhood. He supplies the binoculars when the group watches her shower through her unshaded window, but he seems an awkward participant in this adolescent pastime. When a school friend, Alison (Mikaila Hutchinson) happens on the group, she is amused and walks home with Michael, giving him cause to believe she likes him.

Childhood fantasies take an interesting turn when Amelia encounters an old friend, who happens to be Mary's mother. The mother and daughter come to dinner. Mary, aware that Michael was among her spies, is delighted to play the role of seductress. As Michael reels from this development, his friendship with Alison also grows, and he learns painful secrets about her life.

With pressures from all directions from the women in his life, Michael faces the difficult decision of whether to stay in his troubled home with the comfort of his maps or venture out to find the world he has only studied.

Cinematographer Renaud Maire captures both the beauty of New Zealand and the dark and depressing sides of a small town, showing that Michael has been shaped by both these aspects of his world. Selwyn's Michael is a quiet, sensitive young man who communicates his pain with a glimmer of hope that things might someday be better. Rebecca Gibney makes Amelia a sympathetic character, even as the audience resents the troubled life she has created for Michael. But the best performance is Mikaila Hutchinson as Alison, presenting a playful and humorous girl who carries a frightening secret. Out of her dark and troubled life, she shows Michael a path of escape.

The Map Reader has received the following awards: Spirit of the Independent Award, Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (2008); Best Feature, Las Vegas International Film Festival (2009); Festival Prize, ReelHeART International Film Festival (2009); and Best Children's Film, Tiburon International Film Festival (2009).

For more information, visit: http://www.arklesentertainment.com/themapreader/The Map Reader/The Map Reader.html

Written by :

Deborah

 

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed