HEAD SOUTH

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Storyline (warning: spoilers)

Jonathan Ogilvie’s coming-of-age comedy is a nostalgia fest romance from the 70s post-punk era about a kid in New Zealand mooching around in his uncool school uniform, hanging out in the local record shop (which still has its prog-era name of Middle Earth Records) and dreaming of starting a punk band called the Daleks – though wondering if just Daleks sounds cooler — and obsessing about an unattainably sexy girl who sneers at him.
It will have all of us of a certain age smiling along to its madeleines: the musical cues, stereo music centres and album cover’s. Our teen wannabe guitar hero is Angus. His brother Rory is away in London, and his mum has apparently had a kind of midlife crisis and has departed, leaving Angus alone with his morose, but interestingly droll dad Gordon. Angus is dazzled by haughty and super-glam Holly who claims to be a Londoner; in fact, a musically talented woman who works in the chemist might be a better friend to him – Kirsten, played by the Auckland singer-songwriter Benee.
Oxenbould’s face is itself just right for this part: perpetually sporting a kind of uneasy half-smile, partly scared and baffled by everything that’s happening to him, partly excited, partly trying to display a super-cool ironic detachment from it all It’s the kind of face that infuriates stern teachers and parents without meaning to, and is very bad at concealing inner hurt.
There are some intriguingly bizarre moments: especially when Angus is allowed to borrow a bass guitar for his first gig from someone who stipulates that he be allowed to “photograph” Angus in exchange for the loan, an event which is more embarrassing than Angus, or the audience, anticipated. Again, this has surely to be autobiographical; the weird interlude isn’t followed up, but then that’s part of the chaotic strangeness of real life, and that’s part of the sweet-natured entertainment of this film.