Broken English

If the dusty New Zealand setting, brutal father, and culture clashes look familiar, you're not dreaming. Broken English arrives stateside from the producers of 1995's searing slice of life Once Were Warriors. But the inevitable comparisons between the two sagas end there, as Broken English fails to peel back the themes of ancestry, hope, and love to the same raw layer.

Headstrong Nina (Aleksandra Vujcic) and her family flee from the smoke and shrapnel of their native Croatia to a culturally mixed migrant enclave in Auckland. Her relationship with her oppressive father (Rade Serbedzija) becomes volatile when she seduces strapping Maori god Eddie (Julian Arahanga, who played the eldest son in Warriors). Eager to run away with her new flame, Nina leaves home after accepting thousands of dollars to marry a Chinese refugee (Yang Li) so that he can stay in the country. But as the star-crossed lovers' luck would have it, Nina's father discovers the marriage of convenience -- and the fact that she's pregnant with Eddie's child.

Director Gregor Nicholas succeeds in capturing the simmering tensions among New Zealand's patchwork of cultures, but his self-conscious symbolism hits you over the head like, well, a drunken, hot-headed father with a baseball bat. In this tale of Maori Montagues and Croatian Capulets, good love conquers all but a heavy-handed touch. At the Avon July 11 and 12 at midnight.

-- Alicia Potter