Screenwriters Helen Crawley, Jessie Keyt and Helena Kriel adapt the strange life story of a baby with dark skin born of white Afrikaners in Eastern Transvaal. Initially classified “white,” she grows up whiplashed by the bizarre race logic of South Africa, and one day votes for Nelson Mandela. Sandra Laing is played by Ella Ramangwane as a girl. And later by Sophie Okonedo (“Dirty Pretty Things,” “Hotel Rwanda”) with a timorous downward visage and a smile that sparks with fugitive joy. Her parents Sannie and Abraham (Sam Neill and Alice Krige) love their daughter, hate bureaucrats and yet cannot transcend the insidious tethers of racism–their own and the state’s–that stigmatize their anomalous family. When pregnant Sandra runs away with Petrus (Tony Kgoroge) to Swaziland, the rupture with her parents is tragic in more ways than “Skin” can handle. Director Anthony Fabian arranged for the real-life Sandra to buy a house and open a shop with royalties for the rights to her story, but “Skin” by no means weighs the Kafkaesque contradictions born of a genetic glitch, familial loyalty and apartheid legality. With Bongani Masondo, Hannes Brummer, Ben Botha Lourens Groenewald, Nicole Holme and Danny Keogh. 107m. (Bill Stamets)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Heart: A Review of Soul The real world is soulful, too, in Pixar's bountiful life of the mind.
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
A Drag Getting Old: A Review Of Indiana Jones 5 In the protracted opening couple of reels, a very young, computer-crafted Harrison Ford plays a younger cultural marauder who first encounters the dull MacGuffin of the title.
Fine Line: A Review Of Shortcomings It's a season for the comeuppance of a curmudgeon in Randall Park's smart, biting "Shortcomings," adapted by Adrian Tomine from his graphic novel of the same name.
Screenwriters Helen Crawley, Jessie Keyt and Helena Kriel adapt the strange life story of a baby with dark skin born of white Afrikaners in Eastern Transvaal. Initially classified “white,” she grows up whiplashed by the bizarre race logic of South Africa, and one day votes for Nelson Mandela. Sandra Laing is played by Ella Ramangwane as a girl. And later by Sophie Okonedo (“Dirty Pretty Things,” “Hotel Rwanda”) with a timorous downward visage and a smile that sparks with fugitive joy. Her parents Sannie and Abraham (Sam Neill and Alice Krige) love their daughter, hate bureaucrats and yet cannot transcend the insidious tethers of racism–their own and the state’s–that stigmatize their anomalous family. When pregnant Sandra runs away with Petrus (Tony Kgoroge) to Swaziland, the rupture with her parents is tragic in more ways than “Skin” can handle. Director Anthony Fabian arranged for the real-life Sandra to buy a house and open a shop with royalties for the rights to her story, but “Skin” by no means weighs the Kafkaesque contradictions born of a genetic glitch, familial loyalty and apartheid legality. With Bongani Masondo, Hannes Brummer, Ben Botha Lourens Groenewald, Nicole Holme and Danny Keogh. 107m. (Bill Stamets)
