The End of the Golden Weather

The End of the Golden Weather Twelve-year-old Geoff is a boy who prefers to be alone, dream and write stories. But suddenly one day reality becomes more interesting than his imagination. Geoff meets another dreamer, Firpo, a crazy young man who thinks he is an athlete. Confident of victory they jointly prepare Firpo for his participation in the local running contest.
Comment:
The End of the Golden Weather takes place on a beach on the coast of New Zealand, in the days when the police still made sure that men wore a full bathing suit. The year IS 1936 and life on the beach is an idyll of hollering youngsters and parents reclining under parasols.
Twelve-year-old Geoff observes the world around him, and what he sees is not always the same thing that everyone else sees. When the man that has ''drowned'' in the lifesaving exercise suddenly stands up on the beach, Geoff's sincere question is:
''What did it feel like to be dead ?'' Who doesn't remember how embarrasing it was to be laughed at as a child after having taken the adults' words and actions too
seriously? The feeling of not understanding what is going on.
In this film we once again get to observe the world through the eyes of a pensive twelve-year-old. It is a perspective we have seen before. The director Ian Mune had the script for eight years until Lasse Hallstrom's film My Life as a Dog gave him new inspiration. But this portrayal of the summers of childhood in New Zealand will probably not imediately strike the chord of recognition in Sweden, where summer is hardly associated with Christmas celebrations and exotic beaches.
The nostalgic atmosphere in The End of the Golden Weather is to a great extent created by the photographer Alun Bollinger, whose images are translucent with a light that we Northeners recognize from Skagen.
In 1991 New Zealand gave us Jane Campion's An Angel At My Table which received many awards. Now New Zealand, previously unknown as a film producing country, once again brings us a film which has received 8 New Zealand Film Awards (the country's equivalent of the Oscar), among them the award for best film, best directing and best photography.
Annika Folcker