The Rocky Road To Freedom

Gabriel, a rather shy clerk with the local council, who lives with a fussing mother, sees Mai singing with her keyboard in a pub and hears that she composes her own music. He falls in love with her and determines to form a rock band so that he can invite her on board and get to know her. Unbeknown to Gabriel, Mai works as a prostitute in a brothel, after having been orphaned in her teens, shortly after arriving in New Zealand as an immigrant. She wants to escape from this work, however,into the pop world.
Gabriel, who plays a little acoustic guitar and can sing in tune, gets a band together and invites Mai who joins them. They start composing their own songs and make a very bad video. They rehearse and improve, and then make a better, second video. Mai is civil, but cool and aloof from the band-members, and shows no interest whatsoever in Gabriel's attempts at any closer friendship. Mai and Gabriel have a row when she points out his "drippy hippy" style and says that he will never make a rock band lead. Gabriel, secretly, books a couple of sessions with a choreographer and a stylist. The band are then amazed at his conversion from a mild-mannered folk-singer-type to an "alpha-male rock god".
They eventually perform in public in a pub. A label-scout is in the audience and asks them to get a professional demo CD to him. The band find themselves a manager. A couple of days before they are due in the recording studio, however, Gabriel discovers that Mai is a prostitute. Heis shocked and judgmental. Mai and he have a row. She calls him a bigot and says that he knows nothing about her background.
Mai eventually turns up at the recording studio to make the demo, and Gabriel humbly apologises, later. He still thinks he is in love. The band is round at Gabriel’s house celebrating, after they are told that they have been offered a contract. Gabriel’s motherdiscovers that Mai was the child of Gabriel's father who had left Mai's mother and had come to live in New Zealand, eventually marrying Gabriel's mother, that is, herself. Mai is delighted to discover that she has a younger half-brother and a step-mother, as well. Gabriel tries not to be woeful in that, while he has acquired a half-sister, he now, naturally, has to readjust to how he feels about Mai.