Fantail

This Kiwi indie, shot almost entirely at a gasoline station in a bleak Auckland suburb, is actually much more complex than its minimalist setting initially suggests. Tomboyish dirty-blond twentysomething Tania (Sophie Henderson) is forced to work the midnight shift at the rarely patronized Horizon food mart/gas station: she's trying to scrape up enough money so that she and her younger brother Pi (Jahalis Ngamotu) can go search for their estranged father in a distant place called “Surfer's Paradise.” She's also struggling with an identity crisis, having convinced herself that she's descended from the indigenous New Zealand Maori tribe. With few customers to attend to, Tania soon embarks on an unlikely romantic fling with her buffoonish “extreme sport” regional manager Dean. But beneath an unassuming layer of light rom-com humor lies the ticking human time bomb of blank-slate Pi, who is peer-pressured into smoking crack with his teenage gangbanger pals and is clearly being groomed for entry-level crime. Director Curtis Vowell's subtle foreshadowing creates a slow-burning, creeping sense of tragic inevitability, as Pi and Tania are set on a course that can only lead to ugly confrontation. Highly recommended. (M. Sandlin)