The third feature in a durable filmmaking partnership, Kissy Kissy completes Alexander Greenhough and Elric Kane’s loose trilogy on twenty-something ennui, while giving further legs to the trademarked ‘Aro Film Movement’. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM interviews the co-directors on the eve of their film’s premiere at the Telecom 2007 New Zealand International Film Festivals.


ALEXANDER GREENHOUGH and Elric Kane are enthusiastic about talking about film, but get them talking about their own work, and the words flow out like hyperactive children who’ve just found out they’re going to Disneyland for the first time. They love film, not only watching and analysing it (both gained entry into ridiculously competitive post-graduate courses in United States universities), but they’re also starting to make a name for themselves as fine filmmakers in their own right in New Zealand. Kissy Kissy is the duo’s third film in the New Zealand International Film Festivals, and is arguably their finest achievement so far in their rather young career. I talk to Greenhough and Kane in a barely populated bar, and coupled with the dulcet tones of Rod Stewart swooping around the room, this made for a highly energetic and lively interview.

These two have known each for years, being childhood friends and going to high school together. They’re almost like a married couple, finishing off each other’s sentences. Kane admits “people do wonder a lot about co-directors, but I don’t know of many successful collaborations outside of brothers. Me and Alex have known each other for twenty years. Even when we disagree, he’ll know why I’ll disagree – he’ll know my hang-ups. It’s an appreciation for tastes.” Greenhough adds “we do draw on similar movies and lived experiences. We all hear the same stories, we’ve been to same parties, we’re involved in the same social groups.” This bond has proven to be invaluable in making films together, and the shared drive no doubt has proven key to their filmmaking processes.

Their two previous films (I Think I’m Going and Murmurs) along with Kissy Kissy have covered the ennui of twenty-somethings, situations like relationships and flatting. However, Kissy Kissy feels more mature, a concluding chapter in this loose trilogy, and digs a little deeper into its characters and situations. “There’s a correspondence between our ages and the characters in our films. We’re about to leave our twenties, and these characters are like that”. Kissy Kissy looks at the end of a film shoot, and follows the people involved in the film as they coast along everyday life with disastrous relationships and an inability to communicate. This film is inspired in part by what Greenhough and Kane see in their everyday life. “I like the drift idea, this time period is a period of drifting, flat to flat, part-time job to part-time job, lover to lovers. It’s not like those in a law job whose lives were settled at an early age. This kind of unstable world was something we wanted to get across. It’s a specific set of twenty somethings. They are artistically inclined, I suppose bohemians. Not that it’s something we really dwell on, but they’re more likely to be products of middle class backgrounds and we do concentrate mainly on white characters. It echoes what we know. For us to make Once Were Warriors would be quite false.”

However, these three films have been made as a kind of riposte to the traditional view of twenty-somethings we often see in film. It’d be fair to say Kane in particular is not the biggest fan of Scarfies. “I guess Murmurs was a response. When you’re young, you get so insulted by movies like Scarfies, Kombi Nation – they just indulge in the stereotype, and they treat their characters generically. They’re genre movies – they just stick to the stereotypes.” Greenhough and Kane’s depiction of this demographic (albeit a specific demographic) is much more multi-faceted and complex. “It’s in medias res, rather than back-story, classic expositionary setup. Something is expected of the audience, they have to patch things up. It’s classic art-film material. We get the middle of people’s life stories, we don’t get the conclusions. Things just happen. It’s a reflection of the drift period, drifting doesn’t have clear boundaries, and the narrative structure mirrors the period you’re in. Another key difference is we don’t have any major moments, never a major moment. They’re always constructed around minor catastrophes. People who’ve been through a divorce might think these are not a big deal, but they are.”


But Kissy Kissy has a different style to their other two films, there’s a faster pace, and a deeper interrogation of the characters. “We didn’t think about style as much, which is a benefit. We want the audience to feel like they’re capturing moments. We wanted to go from the inside out rather than outside in, which is a change from Murmurs. How do we create a style that mimics emotions and tensions? Rather than us imposing a form that will impose a way of thinking, we’re trying to emote with the characters.” Greenhough and Kane also focus on little moments – preferring a glance to speak in place of dialogue, or a facial expression to speak in place of a whole scene. It creates on the one hand a very austere tone, but on the other hand, a very rich and emotionally fascinating story. “We’re willing to spend a bit more time with them in their everyday lives [than a lot of filmmakers], they’re more real to life. The characters aren’t under the pressure to fulfil plot functions.” However, the focus is not purely aiming to be objective. “We’re conscious of knowing who we were with – if it’s [the characters] Alison and Mark – we’re with Alison, rather than being arbitrary. We’re never arbitrary. It’s to construct something that feels un-constructed. Balanced with this is a feeling for naturalism and realism, and the scenes intersect organically. The camera is not the focus of the drama, it’s located on the characters.”

Both directors have strong ties to the United States having spent a lot of time already over there, and indeed both are moving over to the States soon after this film is screened. However, this film is strongly tied into New Zealand culture. “Maybe the question is what distinguishes our film is the way of generating conflict, because most conflict doesn’t get to be fulfilled in the film, it’s passively expressively avoided. It’s never expressed – that’s New Zealand culture. We are incredibly passively aggressive [as a nation] and skirt around things. It’s an incredibly frustrating thing to witness. When characters do attempt to address an issue, it’s deflected, or ends messily. The conflict is displaced, the showdown is displaced, rather than focusing on the real problem.”

Greenhough and Kane fit into what film academic Russell Campbell coined the Aro Film Movement. The term captures a particular group of filmmakers who were young, highly literate in film history, and interested in capturing everyday life and emotions in their films. It’s a do-it-yourself movement, one with miniscule budgets (Kissy Kissy was made for less than $2000) and the films require real drive to get made. Greenhough says their films are highly artisan as a result – “we are working the equipment ourselves, and there’s a very small gap between what you see on the film and what we’re responsible for. We’re operating the stuff. It’s not industrial in any way. When we talk about the Aro Valley film movement – that’s the idea. We’re fulfilling the camera stylo argument – there’s not an intermediary, we don’t have a protocol to follow. What we see on screen, is what we want. The only filter is the actor and the camera.” But however, it’d be too easy to reduce the films into that label as well. “I see clearly why these films are lumped together. I can see why Campbell [Walker] as a production model has been an influence – more so than content or themes. I can see similarities in content, but less in style. We write 100 page scripts. These films form a group of films made independently. Most independent films made in New Zealand are generic – science fiction or horror, very few are naturalistic. I wouldn’t say it’s a movement, it’s a category, it’s a grouping. We also are peers, in a sense.”


But one thing that does seem unite these particular filmmakers is a love of film, a love of film that’s not afraid to be highlighted in their own films. “I would say compared to filmmakers of any era, we’ve seen a range of films that have transcended any viewer (like Tarantino). A lot of mainstream, a lot of TV, the weirdest art movies, a lot of avant-garde movies, yet this film is not influenced by it, but it’s there.” A particularly noticeable influence in this film is Maurice Pialat – whose brilliant retrospective at last year’s Film Festival was certainly one well patronised by Greenhough and Kane. They also admit to a bit of “Dogme” feel – “New Zealand is very similar to a lot of Scandinavian countries” – though their work is quite different in many ways (there’s non-diegetic sound for example).

Though it’d be fair to say their films feel very different to the majority of films being made in New Zealand. “I think in New Zealand there’s not a demand for a particular type of movie. There’s not a specific film culture. There are individuals who read Film Comment, or go to the Film Festival, but there’s not an active film culture. Not like a rich film culture of the States or Europe, but that’s probably because we’re a small country.” But their filmmaking process (much like those of the other Aro filmmakers) do seem to capture a particular aspect of the New Zealand mythology – a tradition of independence and innovation against the odds, and doing without the assistance of others. However, a bigger budget will indeed be welcomed in future projects.

“The biggest thing we’re trying to get done is a script called The Pure Land (named after a line under a Colin McCahon painting) about a family coming apart, looking at something that is perhaps a little more important – a familial love, everything requires a bit of effort. Its main concern is with the tenuousness of love. It certainly will continue the tone we've developed with the early work: satirical, observational. I will never feel completely at ease if I don’t make this film. It has to be made. We don’t need a million dollars, we could make it for $50,000 or $100,000, but it couldn’t be made for $5000. It makes it difficult, both of us in the near future are going overseas for a while. In terms of an artistic film project, that will be it – we were working on it before Kissy Kissy. We came back to New Zealand specifically to try and make The Pure Land. We came back to New Zealand and found out that’ll be a long way from happening. We thought we’d make this film in the meantime.”

In spite of the budgetary constraints, Greenhough and Kane have made a compelling film that highlights their talents considerably. And even if the film wasn’t the film that they were originally planning to make, Kane says “there’s nothing negative about making a film. It’s the most positive thing you can do in the world – we’re making films about disconnection, but you have to connect to make a movie. You have to get people together, you have to get a guy to do sound, you have to get a guy to drive together. Any form of representation is a mark of care of the world. If it’s worth representing, it’s worth something, or thinking about, or recording, or reflecting in some way. It’s so much easier to stay at home, but the collaborative thing it does turn yourself over to the shared sense of the world.” Their films belie their low-budget origins, and show that directors armed with a literate script, talented actors, a lot of energy and above all courage, can make interesting and thought-provoking films. “A lot of people aren’t making films because they need to have permission. Do you think novelists sit around thinking the same?”