Caterpillar: Movie Review

Cast: Marta Dusseldorp, Anais Shand, Lisa Harrow, Matt Whelan
Director: Chelsie Preston Crayford

Set in the 2000s in New Zealand's capital Wellington, director Chelsie Preston Crayford's first full-length feature is clearly a personal passion project.

It follows three generations of the same family - there's single mother Maxine (A Place To Call Home's Dusseldorp), who's struggling to finance a film she's been pursuing for years; her daughter Cassie, an aspiring actress (Shand, almost a double for Crayford's looks) and matriarch Huia (Harrow), who's on the cusp of dementia and is obsessed by Monarch butterflies and wants to go to Mexico to see them.

In terms of plot, Caterpillar is light on developments outside of the home, with Crayford fixing her gaze on the internal dynamics of an errant mother and her struggling daughter, and keen to explore the parallels of how her own life was affected by the relationship she had with her own grandmother.

As a result, Caterpillar feels almost insular in its execution and less coherent in terms of drama and narrative than perhaps it could do.

And yet, there's a radiant beauty in this movie that plays out with subtlety, restraint and great heart.

Shand's excellent as the daughter, struggling to get her mother's attention and trying to find her own place in the world. While Dusseldorp has perhaps the more thankless role in proceedings given the perceived gaps and conflict within the family, the moments she shares with the two other protagonists sees the somewhat stereotyped creative character, pursuing it all whatever the cost may be, elevated.

Harrow has perhaps the more wistful role as her Huia struggles with the implications of what's coming while trying to never burden the family. It's a very familiar role and route that she pursues, but the narrative restraint that's bestowed upon the arc adds much to the heft. 

Yet the film's narrative failings are overcome by Crayford's eye for moments that stay with you after the movie's finished.

Whether it's a near perfect final shot that will emotionally destroy those who invest or the revelation of what chaos a Post-It note causes, there are plenty of eye-catching scenes within this to lift it from a female gaze to a director who has an eye for beauty in front of the lens.

There's a quiet dignity in Caterpillar and even if the drama comes crashing in at around the one-hour mark, the work done by the quartet of women involved does much to make it powerfully evocative and its considerations universal, no matter how occasionally insular and singular it feels.