Caro goes from Piha to Hollywood

Niki Caro. Picture / Kenny Rodger

After her international breakthrough with Whale Rider, New Zealand director Niki Caro got sent a lot of scripts. Many involved small girls and large mammals. She laughs that she was briefly tempted by one involving an Australian camel.

Instead, she opted for North Country, the drama about a sexual harassment case at a mining company in north Minnesota - a harsh, cold world away from the sunny East Coast of her previous feature.

However, there was a roundabout connection. Cast as the mineworker behind the case was Charlize Theron, the South African who won an Oscar for Monster. Among her fellow best actress nominees that year was Whale Rider's Keisha Castle-Hughes.

Caro and Theron hit it off. They went and made the movie in Minnesota and New Mexico. And for much of yesterday, with the film getting a wider release after its October American opening, they were in adjoining Auckland hotel rooms talking to reporters before last night's local premiere.

Theron isn't the only big name in the film. The cast also includes Frances McDormand, who spent three weeks in New Zealand at Christmas staying with Caro, husband Andrew Lister and baby daughter Tui at their Piha home.

Making the leap into a major studio film from the relatively modest-sized Whale Rider didn't faze Caro. Nor is it part of a career plan to break into Hollywood.

"I never wanted to do an American film. It's less calculated than people think. People think that I sit in my office with a big whiteboard and have a big career plan and nothing could be further from the truth. I have no plan and I only have my instinct.

"So these films come along and it's sort of like getting a boyfriend - there are lot of qualities in guys that you would like but it's the one that comes out of nowhere that ends up knocking your socks off."

Caro said that as different as they might seem on screen, Whale Rider and North Country were "disturbingly similar" experiences.

Theron's character of Josey Aimes had parallels with Pai in Whale Rider.

"Obviously they both faced tremendous opposition but they go about creating the change in not a crusading heroine way but in quite a gentle way and they are both so unlikely."

And just as she had with the East Coast settlement of Whangara, Caro spent a lot of time in the real North Country mixing with the locals, explaining the film, getting them onside while getting a feel for a part of the United States that rarely appears on the big screen.

"So it was very, very easy to just go there and drink a lot of beer and play a lot of pool and be with the locals so when it came to directing the film I knew what the place is. It's not difficult, it's not rocket science.

"It's so terribly isolated and that really shaped the character of the people and it is one of the reasons this sort of behaviour was allowed to continue for so long. That said, they are good people, they really are."

Now, with the director halfway through an international promotional whirlwind which may kick into a higher gear if Theron wins another Oscar nomination this week, what next?

Well, first, Caro says she wants to spend more time at home with Tui, who was born as Whale Rider took off around the world.

"You would think that pursuing an international career, having a baby and being from New Zealand it would be detrimental but actually it's quite the opposite."

And she's returning to her screen adaptation of Elizabeth Knox's novel The Vintner's Luck, which she was working on before North Country came along. She's in no rush.

"Elizabeth has been so extraordinarily generous and patient and I am trying so hard not to screw it up so I am going to take as long as that takes."