REVIEWS UN CERTAIN REGARD


SAfr-Fr. 2011. 104mins Director-screenplay Oliver Hermanus Production companies Equation, Moonlighting Films International sales MK2, www.mk2.com Producer Didier Costet Cinematography Jamie Ramsay Production designer J Franz Lewis Editor George Hanmer Music Ben Ludik Main cast Deon Lotz, Charlie Keegan, Michelle Scott, Albert Maritz, Roeline Daneel, Sue Diepeveen


Beauty REVIEWEDBY LEE MARSHALL


An impressively controlled study of a macho Afrikaaner and the secret he hides from his family, his friends and himself, Beauty (Skoonheid) is a slow-paced but effective portrait of a kind of apartheid of the mind. It is also a dour and uncompromising arthouse product which will play to a wafer-thin audience at home in South Africa — where the director’s debut, Shirley Adams, barely made a dent in the box office. Further festival action looks like the most obvious step after the film’s premiere here, though resilient audiences in Europe and elsewhere may also be persuaded to take a look. Reminiscent of a certain strain of austere Latin American cin-


ema which includes Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light) and Rodrigo Moreno (El Custodio), the film derives much of its force from the way structure, rhythm and framing play the same tense waiting game the protagonist is engaged in. A lot of weight is placed on the performance of Deon Lotz, and he rises to the challenge, investing Francois, the frustrated family man at the centre of the story, with a thermonuclear mass of repressed energy. Francois lives in Bloemfontein, in South Africa’s Afrikaaner


heartland. He is a big, bullish guy who is first seen at a wedding reception, also attended by Christian (Keegan), the son of an old friend. It becomes apparent only in retrospect that the camera’s slow prowl through the room, and its predatory focus adjust- ment and zoom in on pretty-boy Christian, is Francois’ point of view: even after Francois is identified as the film’s centre of attention, he gives little away. He is married to Elena (Scott), though they seem not to have


a physical relationship. He owns a lumber company and saw- mill, and certain of his comments hint that he might be a racist. When he drives to a farmstead meeting with a group of tongue- tied roughnecks, it could be a white supremacists’ hoedown, especially when one of the group is turned away because he has broken their “no faggots or coloureds” rule by arriving with a fey black boy in tow. So it comes as a shock when in the very next scene Francois


and his beer-swilling pals are seen engaged in an orgy while gay porn plays on the TV. They are hard, homophobic men who like to have sex with each other, before (like Francois) going back to their families, going to church and behaving like regular guys. But Francois cannot stop thinking about Christian — a trainee lawyer whose sideline as a model leads the older man to con- vince himself he may be living in the Afrikaaner closet. The film’s dramatic tension lies not in the explicit content of


many of the scenes but in the set of the protagonist’s mouth and his alert, needy but downcast eyes; or in little details in the cor- ner of the scene, often out of focus – a mixed-race couple on the beach, a happy gay couple flirting in a gay bar where Francois sits drinking, filled with self-hatred, or the archive press cutting on the wall of a restaurant that reads FREE AT LAST. It is still a testing ride for the audience, and Hermanus does not quite know how to end the film; but his is a refreshing new voice in a territory better known until now for its township dramas, at least on the international festival stage.


DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT


Fr-It. 2011. 113mins Director André Téchiné Production companies SBS Films, CRG International, France 3 Cinéma International sales TF1, www.tf1.fr Producer Said Ben Said Screenplay André Téchiné, Mehdi Ben Attia Cinematography Julien Hirsch Editor Hervé de Luze Music Max Richter Main cast André Dussollier, Carole Bouquet, Mélanie Thierry, Adriana Asti, Mauro Conte


Unforgiveable BY HOWARD FEINSTEIN


André Téchiné’s adaptation transforms Philippe Djian’s novel into a dense, fast-moving film with the director’s unique style and many of his signature themes in place. Its direction is, as usual, obsessively controlled but fluid, its rhythms always appropriate for the manifold pieces of the plot. Add seductive setting (atypical images of Venice and the


nearby remote, verdant island of Sant’Erasmo, all shot superbly by Hirsch); extraordinary performances (especially André Dus- sollier’s Francis, a womanising novelist out of touch with his feelings who gets writer’s block whenever he falls in love, and Carole Bouquet’s bisexual Judith, a much younger model- turned-real estate agent); and the pitch-perfect pace of a thriller, nicely augmented by Max Richter’s manic violins. In Unforgivable (Impardonnables), Téchiné’s usual blend of


intellectualism and carnality should make the film a cash cow on the domestic front, a lucrative acquisition in Europe, and a small financial success for a film falling somewhat out of the mainstream in North and South America. Francis is a well-known author of dark bestsellers, a widower


whose wife was fed up with his infidelities and died loaded with sedatives in a suspicious car accident. His beautiful actress daughter, Alice (Thierry), remains embittered. A recurring motif in Téchiné’s films, chance (what the French


call ‘hasard’), is at work from the start. Francis leaves Paris for Venice to rent an isolated flat where he can write. While house- hunting he meets Judith, a French expatriate with a long track record of globetrotting and sexual democracy, who agrees rather quickly to move in with him when her boat runs out of petrol as she takes him to see a house. Jump ahead a year and a half, and the duo are cosily living


together in the idyllic home, the sea on one side, a lagoon on the other, and vineyards all around. Life could not be better, except for the way each relates to


others. Francis compensates for his writer’s block with extreme jealousy. He hires Jérémie (Conte), the troubled, violent ex- convict son of a retired private investigator, Anna Maria (Asti) — a lesbian who had once been Judith’s lover and is still her close friend — to tail Judith and find out if she is having an affair. He had already convinced the reluctant Anna Maria to track down his troubled daughter Alice, who has disappeared without a word. A lot goes on. For the most part, the pieces come together


satisfactorily, though, as usual, Téchiné comes close to over- scripting. Most of the crises depicted end if not happily then on a potentially promising note, so that much of the darkness becomes transformed into light.


May 19, 2011 Screen International at the Cannes Film Festival 11 n


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