‘We Were Dangerous’ Review: Teenage Girls Rebel In A ’50s-set Coming-Of-Age Story – SXSW

deadline.com:

We Were Dangerous begins so strongly and so confidently that it promises to take a grim but familiar period movie trope — the victimization of vulnerable young women in an authoritarian, male-dominated, post-war Christian world — and turn it inside out, mining it for deadpan, absurdist comedy instead of political outrage and focusing on the unexpectedly deep and moving friendships that can be made even in the darkest of situations.

Frustratingly, it never quite comes together as the wry, subversive coming-of-age movie that it might have been, but the performances are powerful enough in Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s debut that its emotional heft is surprisingly indelible.

Initially narrated by the formidable Matron (Rima Te Wiata), this 1954-set film tells the story of Nellie (Erana James) and Daisy (Manaia Hall), both attendees at a New Zealand school for incorrigible delinquent girls.

Matron thinks that her charges have little to offer society, believing that her country’s institutions and educational facilities “are now the front line for saving the uncultivated mind” and that all these girls can ever do is get married and dream of shop work.