Crush is a tale of simmering sexuality set in Rotorua. Moral or sexual ambiguity pervades the narrative of conflicted desire. Its mix of blocked-up writer, spurting mud-pools, infatuated teen, eel farm, American femme fatale (Marcia Gay Harden), noir motels, limp pongas and wheelchairs, plays out in a symbolic NZ landscape not seen before (or since). Director Alison Maclean's debut feature (which she co-wrote with Anne Kennedy) played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
... a scary fairy tale about primal, warring female energies ... as the film's nominal femme fatale, Lane (Marcia Gay Harden) doesn't pack a gun as much as an attitude — mocking, predatory, carnal, malign — that makes you speculate what chronic neurosis is impelling her, though you also like her for the way her wildness exposes the other adults' intellectual pretensions.– Critic Graham Fuller, in Interview magazine
Made with funding from the New Zealand Film Commission in association with NZ On Air and Avalon/National Film Unit Studios
Music by JPS Experience, plus some music by Antony Partos
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