MOVIE REVIEW : ‘DARK OF NIGHT’: A WOMAN VS. A CAR

While riding in the Jaguar Mark II she’s just purchased, a young New Zealand woman named Margaret Alexander hears--or thinks she hears--the sound of someone being strangled in the back seat. That’s just the beginning of her nightmare in “Dark of the Night” (at the Monica 4-Plex).

At first you think she’s never going to get out of that car alive, but for film maker Gaylene Preston, in her feature debut, the lady-in-distress, thriller-of-the-supernatural plot is only a point of departure. She has made an ambitious and pertinent feminist consideration of the status of women in New Zealand, one of Western civilization’s last bastions of male chauvinism.

Preston shrewdly saves her Margaret’s scariest ride for the film’s climax; by that time she’s piled on one unnerving incident after another as Margaret (Heather Bolton), a pretty redhead as sturdy-looking and sensible-seeming as her name, attempts to go about her otherwise completely ordinary daily existence.

In this way, her experiences surrounding her seemingly haunted car becomes an effective metaphor for the uneasiness, anger and even downright paranoia that affect relations between so many men and women nowadays. Preston, who had help from Graeme Tetley and from young New Zealand film pioneer Geoff Murphy in adapting her script from Elizabeth Jane Howard’s story, is even able to evoke the sex-death equation.

At one point Margaret stops to give a ride to a distraught young woman wandering about in the rain. No sooner does the woman enter the back seat than a rather sinister-looking man comes from out of nowhere to jump in alongside Margaret in the front seat. Soon she has reason to consider whether she’s imagining things.

As Margaret becomes increasingly terrified at the curious malevolence of the Jaguar, she nevertheless becomes determined to fight back at the eerie events that start enveloping her, and this allows for considerable humor. (A sense of humor may well be a feminist artist’s greatest virtue.) And when she tries selling the car, it amusingly foils her every time. (For that matter it’s pretty funny that Bolton’s heroine happens to be menaced by actors surnamed Letch and Stalker.)

Were Preston a more seasoned film maker she might have been able to create a genuine enigma, making us wonder whether her heroine, in a fit of sexual hysteria, is imagining everything rather than making it so clear that she’s definitely undergoing a supernatural experience.

If “Dark of the Night” isn’t as sleek and confident as we might have wished, its occasional awkwardnesses are consistent with its heroine’s personality and behavior. In this light, Bolton is an inspired choice for the film’s star. Her moments of ungainliness--she takes a far from graceful gambol across an open field--the generous thrust of her jaw and solid figure and her absolute lack of glamour make Margaret seem all the more real and appealing. “Dark of the Night” (Times-rated: Mature) may be vulnerable to the charge of silliness from time to time, but it leaves us wanting to see Preston’s next film.

‘DARK OF THE NIGHT’

A Quartet Films release of a Preston Laing production with the New Zealand Film Commission. Producers Robin Laing, Gaylene Preston. Director Gaylene Preston. Screenplay Preston with Geoff Murphy & Graeme Tetley. Camera Thom Burstyn, Alun Bollinger. Music Jonathan Crawford. Art director Mike Becroft. Film editor Simon Reece. With Heather Bolton, David Letch, Perry Piercy, Suzanne Lee, Margaret Umbers, Danny Mulheron, Gary Stalker, Michael Haigh, Phillip Gordon, Kate Harcourt, Jane Fisher.

Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature.