Runtime: 83 minutes

Directed by: Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu

Written by: Maddie Dai

Starring: Erana James, Manaia Hall, Rima Te Wiata, Nathalie Morris

By Sarah Manvel

“We Were Dangerous” is a pleasing fantasy movie about three girls – two in their late and one in their early teens – who finds themselves trapped in an unpleasant situation designed to break their spirits. Other movies on this theme tend to be thrillers, such as the biographical “Rabbit-Proof Fence” from Australia in 2002, and the futuristic “Night Raiders” from Canada in 2021. In both of those examples, as with here, the girls who are suffering are primarily (though not entirely) indigenous, and have essentially been incarcerated to forcibly assimilate them into the culture of their colonisers. This is heavy stuff, and one of the subplots is as dark as can be imagined, though it is of course neither imaginary nor exclusive to New Zealand, where this is set. But “We Were Dangerous” has a lightness of spirit that sugars the pill, and turns what might have been a miserable story into a powerfully empowering one. 

As the film begins, it’s the mid-1950s and Nellie (Erana James) and her cousin Daisy (an excellent Manaia Hall) are attempting to escape from their “School for Incorrigible and Delinquent Girls.” They do not succeed, and as a result the school is moved to an island that formerly housed a leper colony. As punishment, the matron (Rima Te Wiata) assigns them the hut with a leaky roof, and also the newest resident, a wealthy white girl named Lou (Nathalie Morris), to join them. Lou has been sent here for reasons explained by the movie’s inclusion in BFI Flare, the gay film festival, and is horrified to learn why most of the other young women are there. Nellie was picked up for vagrancy, Daisy won’t stop running away from her foster families, and many of the other girls became pregnant at inconveniently young ages. It’s obvious but never made explicit that these girls are all being blamed for other people’s failures – though there’s only tasteful hints of trauma in the varying backstories – but there’s a limit to what they can do about it. Or is there?

As for school, there’s primarily the appearance of schooling, which involves being lectured on the bible. Their main time is spent on chores (as in the recent Australian movie set in a religious school, “The New Boy”) which include leaving poisoned peanut butter around the island to kill the rats. While they’re on this hopeless errand Daisy spots a hut built from driftwood, which the hapless caretaker informs them was where a Chinese leper lived out his days after being shunned by the others in the colony. Daisy wishes he’d had a friend to live in the hut with him, but Nellie wishes he’d escaped. Their own leaky hut is next to the medical hut, which the matron keeps locked, until she doesn’t. Over time some of the other girls are dragged in there, and all Nellie, Daisy and Lou can do is listen to the screams. Unless there’s something they can do about it, of course. 

Writer Maddie Dai made the interesting choice to have the matron do the voiceover narration. It’s kind of funny, how convinced she is that she is doing the right and proper thing at all times, even as she beats the girls, calls them whores, and gets angry whenever someone (usually Daisy) leads them in dancing or games in their own language. But the voiceover also provides an element of sympathy for the matron, who should be able to see herself in her young charges, instead of making her into a pure villain. The disconnect between what is preached and what is practiced is where a majority of the humour lies, and director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu is clearly aiming this at older teens with its humorously defiant tone. But even as it deals with pretty grown-up topics it does so in age-appropriate fashion, including something of a cheat of an ending, as the twist is based on information that was deliberately concealed. But that is a quibble. This is a delightful movie about how there’s hope in even the darkest of circumstances, especially if you have a fighting spirit and your friends. And there’s rarely a better message for teenagers than that.