Summary
Chapter One: "A Real Bad Egg." New Zealand. We see a cop car driving through the mountains, eventually arriving at the small cottage of Bella Faulkner. Paula Hall gets out of the cop car and introduces herself to Bella as a representative from Child Welfare Services, before introducing her to Ricky Baker, a young boy who Bella will be fostering. Bella hugs him and comments on how large he is. Ricky walks away sullenly, as Paula tells Bella some more about her foster child.
"Apparently he's a bit of a handful, a real bad egg," Paula tells her. His offenses include disobedience, stealing, spitting, running away, throwing rocks, defacing stuff, burning stuff, loitering, and graffiti. Bella seems undiscouraged, as Ricky gets back in the cop car and closes the door. Paula tells him that he has to get out of the car and embrace living with Bella.
Paul invites the cop, Constable Tappert, to help her inspect Bella's property, as Ricky spots Bella's husband, Hector, coming up the hill with a wild boar he killed slung over his shoulder. Paula says her goodbyes as Ricky skulks away. Hec is unfriendly towards Ricky, as Bella invites the boy in for some food.
Inside, Ricky eats some food, and Bella and Hector look at him. Hector asks him if he's ever worked on a farm. Abruptly, Ricky excuses himself to go to bed. Bella goes to talk to him in his room, telling him she got him books since he likes to read, and some lamps and little statuettes. She welcomes him to their home and tells him she put a hot water bottle in his bed.
After she's left, Ricky sneaks out of the house and sleeps outside. When he wakes up, Bella is sitting on the hill with him, and tells him that Hec is cooking breakfast for them. They go back down to the house, and Ricky eats a pancake that Hec made. He learns that the dog's name is Zag and Hec is once again very unfriendly to him.
That night, Ricky runs away, but comes back soon enough because he forgot something. Bella tells him that she is from the bush, deep in the mountains, but that she never goes back up there because it's such a hard journey. She tells him about a lake there called Makutekahu, "the first place our spirits go on their way to Reinga."
Ricky comments on the fact that there is so much death where they live, and says he saw maggots in the body of a dead sheep the other day. He writes an impromptu haiku about the maggots, a trick that he learned from a counselor who told him to write a haiku to express his feelings every time he got in trouble. He tells Bella another haiku called "Kingi you wanker," which is much more explicit and derogatory.
Bella shows Ricky how to skin animals, but he is grossed out. They take the rifle out and he shoots a bottle, pretending he is a Maori warrior and the bottle is a British soldier. "I'm defending all my wives," he says. She instructs him in how to use the rifle and he abruptly fires it, shooting the bottle directly. They go out and he asks if he can shoot a horse, but Bella tells him he cannot. When he asks if he can ride them, she tells him the horses are too wild. "Why can't they just eat grass and be horses and leave it at that?" she wonders aloud.
Suddenly, Zag runs up barking, and Bella says there must be a pig nearby. They go in search of it, running through the woods, and Bella takes out a knife to kill it. As she slashes the pig and blood spurts everywhere, Ricky looks completely traumatized. "Want to help me gut it?" she asks, and Ricky faints.
On Ricky's 13th birthday, Bella plays an original song on a mini keyboard about how Ricky is now part of their family. Ricky sings along, and Hector looks completely annoyed. Ricky blows out his candles and they give him his present, a dog whom he wants to name either Psycho, Megatron, or Tupac. Bella and Ricky share a tender moment before bed.
The next day, Ricky goes out with the dog, whom he has named Tupac. When he returns home, he finds Hector crying over Bella's body; she has unexpectedly died. The scene shifts to Bella's funeral, where a preacher gives a bizarre philosophical speech, with a convoluted metaphor for finding Jesus. Hec leaves the church abruptly.
Analysis
The film has a brisk and irreverent tone from the start. The pacing of the shots, as well as the music, sets the scene for a film that will be both dark and lighthearted. The circumstances of the plot—a very troubled foster child entering the home of a new family—are not treated sentimentally, but with a matter-of-fact-ness, and a humorous playfulness. Even though Ricky seems to have been dealt a hard lot, which will come to more light in the course of the film, the film presents him as both a lost soul and a comic figure from the start.
While Bella Faulkner is very excited to welcome Ricky into her home, her husband Hector seems more hesitant. Bella is brimming with wide smiles and encouraging words for the young wayward boy, while Hector looks at him with complete skepticism. When Bella invites Ricky to call Hector "Uncle," Hector says that's not what he is to the boy. Then, at dinner, Hector asks Ricky if he's ever farmed before. There is clearly a disconnect between the husband and wife about how to approach their new foster child.
In spite of Ricky's tough shell, Bella is able to connect with the surly boy and make him feel comfortable at their home rather quickly. Even when he runs away and resists her care, she is there with an understanding word, trying to connect. She can break through Ricky's defenses and get him to talk, even though he has been cast aside by the foster care system and made to feel like he is a problem. Bella shows genuine maternal feelings towards the boy and it goes a long way.
Ricky is more complex than Paula from Child Welfare Services gave him credit for. While Paula paints him as a difficult liability, a delinquent who is almost sure to cause Bella and Hec any number of inconveniences and difficulties, Ricky's vulnerability becomes clear once he is settled at the house. He tries to run away and wriggle out of various responsibilities at Bella and Hec's, but when Bella tries to connect, he is eager to reciprocate, and exhibits a charming and quirky innocence, as when he composes an impromptu haiku about the maggots he saw on a dead sheep.
Bella and Ricky's budding connection and tenderness are interrupted by her abrupt death. After throwing him a wonderful birthday party (his first) and telling him how grateful she is to have him in the family, she dies unexpectedly. Ricky is on the brink of finding happiness and acceptance when he returns home to find Hec crying over Bella's body. It is a devastating moment because of Bella's virtuosic mothering to the troubled child. In the wake of her death, we know that Ricky only has Hec, who has, so far, only been dismissive of the young boy.
