Movie franchise The Lord of the Rings may dominate mainstream cultural associations of New Zealand abroad ad nauseum, but the small Pacific nation’s cultural export with the most underground cred is undoubtedly the independent Flying Nun Records label. This beloved slice of local identity is given its proper due in Head South, the genuinely offbeat, dark-edged comedy, set in 1979, that opened the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Its director Jonathan Ogilvie, whose prior films include Australian sci-fi thriller Lone Wolf (2021), drew on his own experiences growing up in Christchurch, the city in New Zealand’s South Island where the Flying Nun label was founded, and his immersion in the post-punk music scene of that era. Head South centres on Angus (Ed Oxenbould), a hapless high school teen dead set on being cooler, who stumbles on the beginnings of a new scene through some intimidating characters he meets at the local record store. Ogilvie has dubbed the fictionalised store Middle Earth Records, in a deadpan nod to the fact that the real heartland of Kiwi culture does not lie in anything that Tolkien penned.
Angus is a budding music fanatic whose private school background and surfer hair do little for his image, but who gets the attention nonetheless of Fraser, the manager behind the counter at Middle Earth, when he comes in seeking a replacement of a warped 7-inch vinyl of the band Public Image Ltd. It was sent to him, in this pre-digital age of musical rarity, by his brother in London, the European capital wistfully looked to then by New Zealanders in its remote colony as the arbiter of all things to imitate. When Angus hears Public Image for the first time, the frame — and his world — expands into wide-screen, one of many playful visual touches (including light flare and glitches) that show a real nostalgic love for the DIY ethos and all things post-punk.
Angus lies about having his own band, then has to frantically throw an act together when his bluff is called and he is invited to play an opening set for local group The Cursed by its condescending lead singer Malcolm (Demos Murphy). He cuts and gels his hair into a more Clash-adjacent look, and persuades Kirsten (Stella Bennett), a sales assistant at the pharmacy, to form Daleks (the TV-inspired moniker a clever nod to how Flying Nun got their name.) Bennett, a Kiwi alt-pop singer-songwriter who performs as Benee, brings just the right balance of diffidence and moxie to Kirsten, who turns out to be the band’s real unsung talent. Her under-the-radar authenticity is the flipside of the shallow hunger for fame of Holly (Roxie Mohebbi), a groupie and speed freak who pretends to be from London, and is trapped in a controlling relationship with a low-level drug dealer (at many points, New Zealand’s darker underside peeks through the film’s lighter coming-of-age elements.)
Shayne Carter, a former member of Straitjacket Fits, a band Ogilvie made music videos for in the ‘80s and ‘90s that signed to Flying Nun and was part of the famed Dunedin sound from the South Island’s university city, collaborates on the film’s music, and Roy Montgomery, whose band The Pin Group were behind Flying Nun’s first release, makes a cameo.
It’s a shame that a Kiwi actor was not cast as lead in this quintessential of local stories rather than Australia’s Oxenbould, but any slight casting misstep does not take away from the most distinctive thing about Head South. More than only a coming-of-age or subculture origin story, it is made strange by an absurdist, paranormal twist, in the strong tradition of the South Island Gothic, as Angus contends with over-active family psychics and ghosts. His civil engineer father Gordon (Marton Csokas), who is in marital trouble and talks cryptically about the dangers of magnetism, fields frequent calls from his clairvoyant aunt Jessica, whose premonition once prevented him dying in the Mount Erebus air crash. He has an appointment for an afternoon tea cream bun with the spirit of his mother on the anniversary of her death, in a running theme of spectral visitation and grief that will become especially significant for Angus as the film progresses. Ogilvie’s tribute to a pre-internet New Zealand, replete with a sharp eye for retro detail and Kiwiana, nails the fact that New Zealand’s isolation was not only literal, but bred a glorious eccentricity of outlook. To “head South,” it emerges in this ultimately existential film, means to navigate the unknown, staying true to one’s own internal compass so as not to get lost.
Director, screenwriter: Jonathan Ogilvie
Cast: Ed Oxenbould, Márton Csókás, Stella Bennett, Roxie Mohebbi
Producers: Antje Kulpe, Jonathan Ogilvie
Cinematography: John Christoffells
Editing: Julie-Anne De Ruvo
Production design: Christopher Bruce
Set design: Michelle Freeman
Sound design: Chris Sinclair
Music: Shayne Carter
Production company: Head South Cohort (New Zealand)
World sales: Moviehouse Entertainment
Festival: Rotterdam (Harbour section)
In English
98 minutes
