★★★★

starring: elizabeth banks, fern sutherland, mickey sumner, and simon mcburney

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REVIEWER: nick tonkin

In the midst of a new scheme to publicly report surgeons' performance, a gifted surgeon's life is thrown into disarray as her colleagues begin to close ranks, and even her partner who is a nurse at the hospital turns her back on her.

Elizabeth Banks leads the New Zealand medical drama A Mistake with a powerful performance and a shaky Kiwi accent as surgeon Beth Taylor. Under her watch a mistake in surgery was made by a young colleague when attempting to follow her direction, resulting in destroyed lives and damaged reputations.

Directed and produced by the New Zealand Filmmaker Christine Jeffs, A Mistake was based on a book by Carl Shuker and adapted to screenplay by Jeffs herself. The film benefits from her approach to storytelling, which is direct but with space allowed for metaphor, to examine aspects of the characters in ways other than dialogue. The film is further complemented by a compelling lead performance from Elizabeth Banks and the support from the deliciously smug Simon McBurney as one of her superiors.

A Mistake is set in Auckland and presents the city in a way that avoids triggering the self-effacing response some Kiwis have when seeing their country on the screen by making Auckland and Devonport seem cinematic and interesting through the talented work from John Toon, Jeff’s longtime cinematographer and partner. Bank’s Devonport villa is a well realised setting for the internal conflict her character experiences and the way she addresses it as the story progresses.

A Mistake is a powerful drama from New Zealand writer/director Christine Jeffs, with a great performance from Elizabeth Banks as a surgeon dealing with the repercussions of a mistake in surgery and the loss of a patient.

★★★★