Rating: NR | Runtime: 77 minutes
Release Date: October 27th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Level 33 Entertainment
Director(s): Christopher Kahunahana
Writer(s): Christopher Kahunahana

We all must take care of the ʻāina because it will in turn take care of us.

Christopher Kahunahana’s Waikiki isn’t a straightforward narrative of a down-on-her-luck Hawaiian. To see the bookended images of Kea (Danielle Zalopany) smiling brightly as she dances hula for a room full of tourists is to think about a similar instance of Naomi Watts in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive—the façade of pristine hope and possibility that clouds us from anticipating or accepting the cruelty that awaits. This depiction might be worse, however, since it isn’t Kea who moved to follow her dreams. No, she’s always lived in Hawai’i. It’s the world that’s stolen her home and, in the process, her ability to survive.

What exists in the middle of those dances is therefore a nightmare not of her choosing. It’s a portrayal of life on land that should be hers yet is anything but. Kea must work three jobs just to try her luck at securing an apartment to escape her abusive boyfriend (Jason Quinn’s Branden). She dances. She teaches. She sings at a bar and flirts with the patrons for tips. And all the while she lives in her van, brushing her teeth at the public beach showers before driving to her next gig with parking tickets piled under the windshield wiper. As skyscrapers ascend and tourists drop money she’ll never see, her existence becomes pushed to the fringes.

So, it makes sense she would channel her anger onto someone worse off. Wo (Peter Shinkoda) is a homeless vagrant she hits with her van while speeding away from Brendan. Unsure what to do, she picks him up and puts him in the back to deal with him later. She hopes to assuage guilt by helping, but he barely speaks or acknowledges what has happened—causing her to lash out in frustration until she discovers the bottom of her life falling out even further. Only then does she begin to see beyond the present. Only then do past abuses and tragedies flood back into her consciousness as though the land itself is attempting to heal her suffering by forcing her to confront her pain.

Waikiki is not going to be a film for everyone as its slow pace and unorthodox narrative structure (which is complicated further by an unreliable narrator rendering everything we see into a potential delusion) can prove challenging. It helps that Kahunahana regularly refocuses his overall message about colonialism and indigeneity with lessons in school, an extra pile of cash from work, and a confrontation in a diner laying out the hypocrisy and opportunistic short-sightedness of those who are one bad day away from poverty themselves. Some of what results can be confusing (Is Branden really abusive or is that part of Kea’s hallucinations?), but all of it is dramatically potent.

And it’s mostly due to a wonderful performance from Zalopany. Her character is put through the wringer emotionally. She’s struggling for everything she has and it doesn’t seem as though anything goes her way. Kea yearns for innocence and safety—two things that were ripped away from her at a very young age to leave her broken beyond repair. The only way she can even begin to attempt survival is to split in two so as not to give up on herself. Only through this fracturing of identity can she find sympathy and the strength to continue on. Yet, even so, success is forever outside her control. The country in which she lives has stolen that too.

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Danielle Zalopany in WAIKIKI; courtesy of Level 33 Entertainment.