Movie Review: Head South

​Jonathan Oglivie’s Head South evokes 1970s Christchurch in a low-budget, low-lit, snappy and video-driven homage to punk rock’s untimely Antipodean afterbirth. Oglivie was in Christchurch post-punk act YFC (originally Youth For Christ) so he knows the territory, plus he directed iconic Flying Nun videos including “She Speeds” for Straitjacket Fits and “Cruise Control” for the Headless Chickens.

Ed Oxenbould is the twitchy teen protagonist who has to fight fear to start a band in a scene where monosyllabic minimalism is de rigeur, accompanied by sneers and withering glances. Oglivie keeps the camera tight on the protagonists, evoking adolescence’s claustrophobia and self-obsession, while covering over the 2011 earthquake’s destruction of most of the original locations. The design evokes Kiwi suburban slumber, a restless sleep haunted by distant disasters (Erebus) and the unquiet spirits of the city of the plain’s Gothic past. Yesterday’s technologies – Italian sports cars, Flymos, stereograms, Pong (the computer game), Ace Tone organs, and battered pushbikes, hum with local (Toy Love, the Gordons, The Scavengers) and imported sounds (Wire, Public Image, Magazine). Benee is authentic as a shop assistant turned songwriter who Oxenbould tries to cajole into his group. Marton Csokas as Oxenbould’s Dad nicely mixes Man Alone and superannuated lounge lizard. True, the film has a lot of loose ends, sidesteps the bootboys, and stops too abruptly, but it is cool, knowing and funny enough to be worth the time of any NZ music fan.

​Matthew Bannister