The girls sent to this reform school aren’t really bad apples, they’re kiwis. New Zealanders and indigenous Māori, they’re sent by white society to reform school to eradicate their native language and culture and train them to become good Christian wives and mothers or, at minimum, shop workers.
Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s We Were Dangerous has a more lyrical and culturally damning spirit than the reform-school dramas we are mostly familiar with from American B movies. About a dozen young teens inhabit the School for Incorrigible and Delinquent Girls overseen by the Matron (Rima Te Wiata) and her assistant sometime in the mid-20th century. In the film’s voiceover, which is delivered by the Matron, we are told the school is the “front line for saving the uncultivated mind.” However, after three girls attempt a breakout and one is found to be pregnant, the school’s white male governors order the facility to relocate to a remote island that used to be a lepers’ colony.
The friendship among three girls who buck the Matron’s call to “Christinize, civilize, and assimilate” is the focus of the story. Nellie (Erana Jones) and Daisy (Manaia Hall) were city vagrants picked up and sent to the school for reformation, where they befriend Louisa (Nathalie Morris), who comes from a privileged family background but is rumored to have a mysterious sexual past. The details are unknown to the other girls. The Matron’s voiceover, however, tells us exactly why Louisa was sent away, as well as telling us the other girls’ background stories. Her voiceover confuses the film’s narrative point of view. At another point, her narration provides a hint to the Matron’s Māori background and her zeal to please her white overseers. What we hear makes it seem like We Were Dangerous will be the Matron’s story; however what we see makes it clear that this is the trio’s story, or at least the story of Māori cultural indoctrination, writ large.
Because it is believed that “stupid women love to procreate,” forced sterilizations commence in the island’s medical shed. This becomes the trio’s breaking point. Some friction among them is played out in unnecessary backtracking in which their various perspectives are seen from different vantage points. Yet the strategy only muddies the already confusing point of view. Once the climactic escape plan is hatched, the 83-minute film rushes toward its unlikely but hopeful conclusion. Despite being culturally specific to New Zealand, We Were Dangerous tells a story (by screenwriter Maddie Dai) that is universal to indigenous people on every continent.
Lovely performances by the actresses make We Were Dangerous an engaging proposition despite its thunderous musical cues and shifting perspective. “It’s hard to redeem a girl who believes nothing is wrong with her,” sighs the Matron in frustration at one point. It’s also hard not to have a rooting interest in girls such as these.
We Were Dangerous
Narrative Feature Competition, World Premiere
Monday, March 11, 3:45pm, Alamo LamarFriday, March 15, 9:15pm, Alamo Lamar
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This article appears in March 8 • 2024.
