Saving Grace

Costa Botes, long-time Dominion film critic, director of many short films and co-director of the infamous Forgotten Silver, makes his feature début the hard way with this needling, ambitious two-hander. Saving Grace is written by local playwright Duncan Sarkies (then aged 24), based closely on his highly regarded play, first produced in 1994 at Bats Theatre and subsequently staged to considerable success throughout New Zealand. Grace is a jittery eighteen-year-old streetkid with a chip on her shoulder. She meets Gerald, an unemployed carpenter, at the Social Welfare office. Gerald is twice Grace’s age, a bit cheesy; yet there’s something arresting about him, a hint of the magician.

Grace moves into Gerald’s flat, cynically intending to live off him for a while. Instead, mutual curiosity becomes wary mutual respect. Unaccustomed to being taken seriously, Grace opens up to Gerald. With tenderness and insight, he helps repair her shattered self-esteem. For the first time in her life, Grace begins to feel loved and secure. She begins to fall in love with Gerald — and then he tells her that he is Jesus Christ.

Is Gerald merely some messianic nut who’s learnt to walk on the bath-water? Is Grace’s saviour simply a figment of her imagination? Or is this indeed the Son of God, alive and on the dole in 90s Wellington? Sarkies and Botes place their bets all ways, creating a troublesome puzzle in which spiritual need and spiritual consolation refuse to fit together.

Though the figurative nature of the stage relationship does not always translate comfortably to the movie’s naturalistic setting, there’s no doubting the aspiration or integrity in Botes’ refusal to be daunted by the big questions. — Bill Gosden

“That’s what movies can do best. They can bend reality and explore dreamlike states… I love surrealism, but I’m not into fantasy, as such. I like being on a cusp between what’s solid and what’s not. The same sensibility or balance in Duncan’s writing really attracted me, as theatre critic Denis Welch cleverly pointed out about Sarkies’ work: ‘It’s more ‘realism’ than ‘sur’’.” — Costa Botes