Holy Days review: hardly revelatory, but sweet

I’ll line up to see the holy trinity of Australian stars Judy Davis, Jacki Weaver and Miriam Margolyes (the latter an officially adopted citizen) without reading a synopsis of their new movie.

Remarkably, Holy Days, the debut directorial feature of Nat Boltt, a South African import to Aotearoa, marks the first time Davis (My Brilliant Career) and Weaver (Animal Kingdom) have starred on-screen together.

While Weaver and Margolyes both lent their remarkably elastic vocal talents to 2014’s Maya the Bee Movie, their parts were recorded separately. So this divine union truly is a case of immaculate timing.

Holy adaptation

Adapted by Boltt from the novel of the same name by beloved Kiwi author Joy Cowley, the 70s-set Holy Days fields these three queens alongside emerging Māori actor Elijah Tamati.

Playing Brian, introduced riding his bike in a super-cute stop-animated opening sequence, he’s as rambunctiously prone to troublemaking as most 10-year-olds, but a sweetie at heart. Though his is a wounded one, with cancer having cruelly snatched his too-young mum Paula (Renaye Tamati, Elijah’s real-life mother).

Nursing that hurt, Brian lashes out at his doting dad Joe (Craig Hall) for the perceived betrayal of remarrying the tenderly patient Liz (Boltt). Trying to mend their broken bond, Joe gifts Brian a fragile snow globe of Aoraki, the sacred ‘cloud piercer’ that is Aotearoa’s highest peak. Joe says Paula stepped off the top to a better place. 

But Brian’s having none of it, spending most of his free time helping out at the local convent instead. It’s the crumbling home of Sisters Agnes (Davis), stern but fair, Mary Clare (Weaver), shy and gentle, and Luke (Margolyes), who’s a bit dotty, occasionally losing her false teeth in her soup.

But their bucolic haven is, like poor Brian’s mum, not long for this world. What We Do in the Shadows actorJonny Brugh’s shifty drunk of a resident priest, Father Findlay, is in cahoots with John Bach’s mercenarily profit-driven Bishop Chaytor. The latter’s champing at the bit to sell it off to property developers (the actual manifestation of Satan, these days).

When the sisters realise the convent deeds reside with Patricia (Māori actor Tanea Heke), a former nun-turned lawyer, they ‘borrow’ Father Findlay’s Holden station wagon and head off on a road (and ferry) trip to the South Island to retrieve them.

Clumsy history

Fusing elements of The Castle with Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Rachel House’s stronger directorial debut, The Mountain, Holy Days is an amiable, if not entirely original, loosely paced caper that’s held aloft by its top-line trio.

It’s a bit odd that Boltt casts Cowley’s Kiwi nuns as Irish (Davis), Scottish (Margolyes) and Australian (Weaver, back to her own accent after many years feigning American), but I suppose the higher calling is an international gig.

Regarding the elephant in the room, the church’s oft-dubious colonial history is tiptoed around somewhat clumsily here. You might grimace when Sister Mary Clare euphemistically describes their rehoming of many babies taken from single mums as a helpful thing to Brian. Granted, the reality of the church’s industrial child kidnapping and abuse of ‘fallen’ women wasn’t widely known in the 70s.

Sadly, the budget for production designer John Harding, art director Sarah Cooper and Lesley Burkes-Harding’s costumes doesn’t stretch quite far enough to convince of that era, beyond that vintage Holden with its wobbly dashboard Jesus.

The awful truth we now know is addressed later, ever so briefly, connecting to Mary Clare’s Australian childhood. But the jolly spirit of Holy Days doesn’t want to linger on such horror – why include it at all, then, one might ask?

There’s also an uncomfortable bit of body shaming for laughs, regarding Sister Luke’s weight, that doesn’t sit all that well, as she notes, ‘I’m not fat, I’m just easy to see’.

Watch the trailer

Blasphemy

From the convent to the snowy slopes of Aoraki, the film’s only mild dalliance with danger, Boltt keeps things light and breezy, often resorting to fart gags and blunt physical comedy to keep the film chugging along like that trusty Holden.

But there’s no denying the camaraderie between Weaver, Davis, Margolyes and Tamati. And yet, as blasphemous as it may be to admit, for a Weaver, Davis and Margolyes devotee, I found myself wishing Boltt had focused more on the much-needed Māori grounding brought by Tamati’s mum.

Patricia’s particularly brilliant, when withering at Father Finlay, ‘I do not have the time or the crayons to explain to you how much you have messed up’.

While Holy Days may be as simply drawn as a kids’ crayon doodle, with nothing revelatory here, if you just want a feel-good frolic, it’s a nice time at the movies that’s magnified by cinematographer Thomas Burstyn’s bright lens on Aotearoa’s astonishing countryside.

Holy Days premieres in cinemas on 6 August.

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