Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Mixed-Race Romance Leads To Hot Passions

Janet Maslin New York Times

The men drink, laugh and play cards, accompanied by a couple of stunning young women in skimpy clothes. At first the setting goes deliberately unexplained, but this turns out to be a cozy domestic scene. In “Broken English,” an impassioned, offbeat film from New Zealand by Gregor Nicholas, these are the Croatian Capulets, and their Juliet is a reckless, wanton beauty. “She make him remember,” says one of the Croatian men, in the language of the title, “what fine race we are.”

Her name is Nina, and her father Ivan (Rade Serbedzija, charismatic star of “Before the Rain”) would kill to keep her. But Nina is a tempestuous free spirit, as portrayed with astonishing naturalness by Aleksandra Vujcic in the film’s leading role. Ms. Vujcic’s story is as good as the film’s: like her character, she emigrated from Croatia to New Zealand and had no particular ambitions to act. She had been there just over a year, working as a receptionist, when the film’s casting director spotted her in a bar. Understandably. When she was offered a script, she behaved just as her character might and threw it away.

Persuaded to try acting, she now glides through this film with the same carefree, sensual ease and what-the-hell blitheness that is so infuriating to Nina’s father. Ms. Vujcic wrote her character’s surprising opening lines about living in a war zone, and her Nina lives them to the hilt.

“I had my own shelter,” she murmurs. (The voice is soft and teasing, instantly alluring.) “I had the shelter of my mind, which I carry with me wherever I go.”

Later on, caught up in the story’s turmoil, Nina describes herself even more succinctly with a little shrug:. “Can’t change nothing about who I am, you know.”

If Nina can’t change, certainly everything about her can. And has: her proud, stubborn family has been uprooted to the place Ivan calls “the bottom of the earth,” and the film conveys this strangeness fully. The family is thrown into a fury once Nina, working as a waitress, catches the eye of a handsome Maori cook named Eddie.

He is played with equal fire by Julian Arahanga, who had a role in “Once Were Warriors” (which this film recalls in its heat and volatility) and works as a film technician when he isn’t acting. Nicholas makes the most of his film’s attractive, unspoiled, hot-tempered young stars.

“Broken English” hurtles boisterously through the troubles created by this potential Croatian-Maori union. Ivan’s prejudices, fueled by his already apparently having one mixed-race grandchild, are out of control. And in their barren backyard, studded with cinder blocks and shadowed by an electric tower, the Croats glare at neighbors who have a festive Polynesian partying style. (Among the film’s eclectic extras are members of the Dalmatian Club of Auckland.) Their anger at wartime outrages in their homeland is free-floating and not about to subside.

Nicholas ably conveys the full range of confusion created by New Zealand’s large and varied influx of immigrants. “Broken English,” which takes its title from the dilution of that country’s dominant Anglo-derived culture, also involves a Chinese couple who pay Nina to enter into an arranged, in-name-only marriage so that the child they hope to have some day will be “a small kiwi.”

Contrasting with the tensions among various ethnic groups are the visceral passion uniting Nina and Eddie and this heroine’s utter, headstrong sense of freedom. When Nina sees a group of dolphins frolicking in the ocean (in a scene that casts Temuera Morrison of “Once Were Warriors” as a robust sailor), she simply dives in and joins them.

The film builds to a raw, explosive battle between Ivan and Eddie, which in some sense is where it was headed all along, and which defines the older man’s stubbornness in genuinely shocking, unexpected ways.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “BROKEN ENGLISH” Locations: Lincoln Heights Directed by Gregor Nicholas, starring Rade Serbedzija, Aleksandra Vujcic, Julian Arahanga and Temuera Morrison Running time: 1:30 Rating: NC-17

This sidebar appeared with the story: “BROKEN ENGLISH” Locations: Lincoln Heights Directed by Gregor Nicholas, starring Rade Serbedzija, Aleksandra Vujcic, Julian Arahanga and Temuera Morrison Running time: 1:30 Rating: NC-17