The nice lady - her name is Marina - who serves us our hot chocolate at the Aquatic Centre is from a tiny town near Bluff at the bottom of New Zealand's South Island. As she said, "It's the sort of place which, if you're a girl and finish school at fourteen, you get pregnant in, or you leave."
Obviously, she left, and having bandied about the obligatory jokes about New Zealanders - Q: "Why are there no swimming pools in New Zeland?" A: "Because everyone who can swim is already over here" - I asked her if she had seen "The Hunt for the Wilderpeople", filmed in New Zealand's South Island. She hadn't and I had a spare DVD, and so I gave it to her.
She took one look at the cover and thought all her boats had come it (get it? boats come in? her name is Marina, right? oh, forget it!) "Oh, it was directed by Taika Waititi! He's the one who made that other movie about a little boy whose imaginary friend is Hitler!" she exclaimed.
What? Adolf Hitler had friends? I have to see that movie! I googled for it as soon as we came home from Batemans Bay, and found "Jojo Rabbit".
It's about Jojo, a lonely German boy, who discovers that his single mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic. Aided only by his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, Jojo must confront his blind nationalism as World War II continues to rage on. Combining a tragedy of this proportion with humour, even if it is satirical, is a precarious tightrope walk that director Taika Waititi seems to have walked with great aplomb.
I bought the DVD and shall share it with Marina after I've watched it.
