We Were Dangerous

I'm mildly surprised this isn't hanging on into next week, especially since the Somerville isn't getting any of the two big openers this weekend - they've got a live event, Ran, and Friendship, because the theater was quite full when I got there last night. Granted, it's not terribly difficult to make screen #2 in the Somerville Theatre look relatively full, but I figured this might indicate good word-of-mouth that gets it a little more life. It's apparently hanging around at West Newton for another week, but they've got six screens to play with rather than three.

Anyway, still at the Somerville Wednesday and Thursday. I liked it more than expected, and kind of hope my nieces are reading because the girls in it are about their age, this seems like their kind of thing, and though I doubt that it's playing anywhere near them in Southern Maine, maybe they'll look it up on JustWatch in a couple months.


We Were Dangerous

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 May 2025 in Somerville Theatre #2 (first-run, DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

It's been some time since I was the age of the kids in this movie and I was never a young girl, so I don't know if We Were Dangerous necessarily rings true, but it feels like it does. Or, maybe, it reflects one's memories from a few years later, that even when adolescence is far from carefree, kids can find a lot more fun and joy than you might expect from experiences that mingle with horror.

It opens inside a New Zealand "School for Incorrigible & Delinquent Girls" with a trio trying to plot a break-out (only one gets out and it may not quite be an "escape"). This gets the facility moved to an island that has previously been used as a fort, a leper colony, and a staging area for a trip to Antarctica. The two Maori girls who tried to help their friend escape are Nellie (Erana James), stubborn and defiant, and Daisy (Manaia Hall), impulsive and eager; they describe themselves as "cousins, but not in the white sense" to new arrival Louisa (Nathalie Morris), who unlike most of the girls is white and from a very nice home, but called a "sexual delinquent" for being caught making out with her female tutor. They become fast friends despite or because of the Matron (Rima Te Wiata) having it in for them, but being placed in the worst, leakiest cabin also gives them an eye on how this place can become worse.

For American viewers, executive producer Taika Waititi will probably be the most familiar name in the credits, and while the film doesn't have his particular fingerprints on it, you can put this movie beside his work and see the same sort of Maori sense of humor, a wry sense of absurdity that takes a cock-eyed view of the world. The front half of the movie, especially is loaded with great deadpan verbal and visual gags, with newcomer Maniana Hall a real find as someone who can make the fact that Daisy is uneducated and naive about three quarters of the joke while the rest is that Daisy is actually a funny kid the rest. It's a very funny movie, much more than I perhaps expected.

That makes the shift to things being serious work even better; director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu (who has an "additional writing" credit after writer Maddie Dai) never has the movie screech to a halt to say that fun time is over, and now we're getting serious even as she does linger on something intended to make one feel sick to one's stomach. She's more likely to present it in a way that reminds the audience that it was always there, and girls like Nellie and Daisy already knew it was there, even if others were able to ignore it. Stewart-Te Whiu may raise the stakes for the audience and start driving things to a climax, but there's a steadiness to how she does it that, in the end, reminds you that Nellie and Daisy, at least, are the same girls who tried to help a friend at the very start.

And they're great girls. Erana James's Nellie may, as the Matron's narrator claims, think she already knows everything, but James plays her as not just observant and clever, but smart enough to not to bring out the sharpest edge of her sarcasm until it's really necessary, and not prematurely cynical even though life has treated her badly. Hall, as mentioned, is a newcomer (IMDB says she auditioned for the role as a joke), but it's easy to see why the filmmakers cast her; she's not just funny but capable of expressing Daisy's worry and shame, and expressing big emotions by speaking plainly. Nathalie Morris, of course, comes at things from a different angle, making Lou someone who could be snobbish but is just self-aware enough not to be, although her reactions when both Nellie and the Matron call her on her privilege are impressive as well.

On the other side, Rima Te Wiata gives a terrific performance as The Matron. We don't necessarily need for the film to have her narrate flashbacks to her younger years with a couple young actors, perhaps, because we can see who she is fairly clearly, although those scenes really cement that she's not a well-meaning outsider but a Maori who is complicit, having absorbed the disdain of her oppressors. Indeed, there's something heartbreaking about her sincerity when she says she's looking out for the girls; the matron is not entirely a good person who has been used as a tool by evil, but there's enough of that in her to make her a pitiable villain.

It's a great-looking film, especially once it gets to the island. Stewart-Te Whiu does a fine job of contrasting the mostly-unspoiled beauty of the location with its malign intent, often creating the feeling of visiting a preserved historical site and having it sink in that there's danger behind its quaintness. She regularly flips the costuming between school uniforms and jumpsuits that scan as not quite prison garb but close enough, and the matron's narration is carefully contrasted against action that undermines it. All this double duty keeps things tight; there's really not a wasted minute despite the film often seeming more ambling and observational than focused, right down to the final minutes which don't dawdle at all.