Magik and Rose

...a small scale but quite delightful female buddy pic with a small town setting and deeply felt emotions. The tale of two contrasting women who want to have babies is given disarmingly sweet treatment by the 28-year-old writer-director, resulting in a colorful, lively pic that’s easy to enjoy.

– Australian writer David Stratton reviews Vanessa Alexander's first feature, Variety, 5 June 2000

...one of the more beguiling local efforts to make it into cinemas in recent times . . . Alexander, who also wrote, has a sense of character and plot which would befit a veteran. Better still, she juggles the pathos and comedy of the storyline — which traverses the highly charged subjects of infertility and adoption — without lapsing into the mawkish on the one hand or the farcical and banal on the other.

– Peter Calder, in a three-star review when the film played at the NZ Film Festival, July 2000

There is nothing you can't eat your way out of.

– Magik (Alison Bruce) to Rose (Nicola Murphy)

It’s a sweet tale, if a little tonally unpredictable, and [Vanessa] Alexander populates her world with no shortage of colourful characters. The titular characters are essentially two parallel aspects of motherhood — one looking to begin and one looking to reclaim — and as such they play very well off one another. Murphy and Bruce have great chemistry which is essential for the roles, and spending time with them is oddly comforting.

– Website Cinema Aotearoa

Rose, I want to know what's going on. Is this serious?

– Stuart (Simon Ferry) to his wife Rose (Nicola Murphy)

She is unpretentious and precise. In addition to that, she had an excellent rapport with the cast and crew — the result of which is apparent in the standout performances.

– Producer Larry Parr praises writer/director Vanessa Alexander, in the press kit for Magik and Rose

Magik and Rose began as an idea for a short film, then became a TV Sunday Theatre treatment, and like a snail, slowly evolved into a 90 minute feature script.

– The press kit for Magik and Rose

I'd often been cast in fairly serious roles. Magik is bold, eccentric and not at all concerned about how others see her. It was a wonderfully liberating part.

– Actor Alison Bruce, in the Magik and Rose press kit

She was barely 16, totally outside her range of experience — and yet consistently gave these riveting, emotional, word-perfect performances take after take after take.

– Director Vanessa Alexander on actor Florence Hartigan, in the Magik and Rose press kit

That it never topples is in good measure attributable to the unaffected and generous performances of the two leads. [Alison] Bruce, in particular, has long been as one of the country's most technically gifted — and underused — actors. She has a face the camera loves and which, in this role, exudes exactly the required mix of warmth and pain. She is patient with us, and with herself, taking the time to let the complexity of her feelings through.

– NZ Herald reviewer Peter Calder on the work of actor Alison Bruce, July 2000

I've been thinking of advertising . . . people advertise for all sorts of crap.

– Magik (Alison Bruce) on her plans to find a sperm donor

Producer Larry Parr rang the day before the festival and asked, 'What's your plan B?' . . . There was no plan B — plan A had to work.

– Writer/director Vanessa Alexander on filming scenes among the thousands of people at Hokitika's Wildfoods Festival, The NZ Herald, 12 July 2000

Jackson needed to be the perfect man — in a way you've never imagined him. On screen, Oliver has this sort of tall, intelligent oddness that you just can't take your eyes off.

– Director Vanessa Alexander on actor Oliver Driver's perofrmance as J, in the Magik and Rose press kit

...the real beauty of this story isn't in the script. It's in the actors. [Simon] Ferry as Stuart is particularly effective, with Murphy as pharmacist's assistant Rose not far behind.

– Dylan Cleaver in a three-star review, The Sunday Star-Times, 23 July 2000, page F3

We were on the dance floor trying to make a human wall behind the DOP [director of photography] to stop the camera getting bumped.

– Director Vanessa Alexander on DOP Fred Renata filming hundreds of dancing revellers at Hokitika's Wildfoods Festival, in the Magik and Rose press kit

Look, I don't care about being a single mother — I've got plenty of money. I've got a house back in Christchurch. I just don't want to have to go into some bar and bonk any weasel I don't know, just to get sperm. I mean look, he could be diseased, stupid, bad DNA, whatever. I don't want some blind, asthmatic, diabetic or anything...

– Magik (Alison Bruce) describes how she sees the situation to Rose (Nicola Murphy)