KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * * *
Verdict: Engaging portrait of a traffic-light windscreen washer that morphs into a moving portrait of social dislocation.
A Waitangi Day opening seems apt for this slice of Kiwiana, written and directed by an American New Zealander of Chinese-Hungarian extraction. You won't see it on prime time television, though (although maybe TVNZ will find a small-hours slot for it on the new digital platform).
That's because its profanity count is up there with Goodfellas and most of the swearing comes from the mouth of its Maori title character, a traffic-light windscreen washer who goes by the name of Starfish and who, for more than half the film's running time, seems little more than a foul-mouthed extrovert with a borderline personality disorder.
But as we get to know Starfish, the film morphs into a moving, even harrowing, portrait of a man who struggles with the cultural and economic dispossession suffered by so many of his people.
His often shamelessly hammy mugging for the camera - Starfish shows that windscreen washing is 10 per cent car maintenance and 90 per cent street theatre - gives way to artfully edited sequences in which he rails against every man who did him down and a society which has marginalised and victimised him and many like him.
You won't see this on Close Up, but it's pretty close to home.
Cast: Starfish
Director: Sandor Lau
Running time: 75 minutes
Rating: R16, violence, offensive language, drug use
Screening: Academy from Feb 6
