The House Within, directed by Joshua Prendeville, is in cinemas now.
Becoming a grandmother is nature’s way of reminding us when we are old what it is like to fall in love again.”
So says one of Aotearoa’s finest authors in her later-life memoir So Far, For Now – just one of the many deeply moving works by the infinitely perceptive Dame Fiona Kidman, who is profiled in Joshua Prendeville’s accomplished debut documentary feature.
And if you’re going to portray the life story of an esteemed author and cultural icon, who better to tell it than the writer herself?
In The House Within, the humbly fascinating Kidman shares amusing and heartfelt recollections of her 85 years, from growing up an ordinary Kiwi girl with working-class parents in Northland, to becoming one of Aotearoa’s most beloved novelists and poets.
It’s one of those child-to-artist stories that throws up unexpected details throughout its trajectory: a longed-for daughter of domestic servants, sickly little Fiona Eakin could not read at all until the age of 6, when she promptly learned how in one afternoon and immediately began reading “quite complicated” books.
We hear how young Fiona entertained nocturnal musings about killing her mother’s wartime lover, and how she learned about human behaviour by eavesdropping on the telephone’s shared party line.
Her thirst for reading and writing took off, and with a sense that “writing changes things”, Kidman’s urgent output included essays, poems and controversially received novels, notably her 1979 debut, A Breed of Women, which was banned for its sexual openness and earned her the nickname “filthy Fiona”. Watching this unassuming elderly New Zealander chuckle in her recount of life as a women’s libber – “Oh no, what have I done?!” – is the greatest delight.
Prendeville as director originally approached Kidman to discuss adapting one of her novels, but instead struck up a friendship that became the doco. He has another New Zealand literature adaptation in the works – his contemporary take on Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party features in this year’s NZ International Film Festival.
Here, Prendeville’s directorial choices are spot on. Avoiding the documentary trope of having sycophantic talking heads talk about her, he sticks to using Kidman’s own words, read from her writings, recounted in intimate interviews filmed in her Wellington house, and observed as she shares the stories behind old photographs.
It’s an utterly unsensational method which, owing to Kidman’s warmly low-key Kiwi manner and her magic with language, produces a completely stunning result.
Rating out of five: ★★★★★
