As seen at AFI Fest 2008:
The day before a black man
became the President-elect of the United States, I saw Anthony
Fabian’s Skin,
the true story of a South African woman named Sandra Liang
(Sophie Okonedo) who was denied the same rights as her white
family because she was born with brown skin acquired from
generations-old genes. Think of the opposite of the Anthony
Hopkins character in The
Human Stain, only living
in a culture where being black meant being oppressed.
The most interesting part of Skin is
not the rare genetic inheritance that long pained the life of
its protagonist. Instead, it’s how the people around Sandra
respond to her color. After a brief flash-forward in time, the
movie begins with Sandra as a young girl (Ella Ramangwane). Her
parents enroll her in the same whites-only school as her older
brother. Sandra is allowed to attend despite an apprehensive
administration, but she is soon kicked out when a racist teacher
makes up a reason to beat her and kick her out, causing her
father (Sam Neill) to engage in battle with the government over
her official race. One would think he’d become a tolerant guy
because of the ensuing hardships, but he doesn’t at all. When
Sandra begins to date his general store’s black supplier (Tony
Kgoroge), her father immediately tries to end it because of the
man’s race. In other words: he thinks it’s a-OK to persecute
blacks, just not his black-appearing daughter because she has
white parents. And the chaos doesn’t stop there. After Sandra
marries the man and shuns her family as a result, he turns out
to be abusive, suggesting that she was subconsciously attracted
to him because he possessed the very same violent qualities
embodied by Daddy.
While Skin tells
a remarkable story packed with painstaking themes about fate, it
isn’t a remarkable film. This is primarily because
storywriter/director Anthony Fabian sticks to a rote narrative
approach. He embraces the classical style to an unhealthy extent
and the film, as a result, gets stuck in the standard
“true-story” mold and the characters are never explored in any
true depth. Fabian clearly chose a simple structure so that he
could convey the story factually—when introducing the film at
the screening I attended, he made sure to point out everything
onscreen was true—but in doing so he robbed Skin of
its emotional authenticity. In other words, Fabian invested so
much of his attention in the facts that he didn’t have any time
to flesh out his characters’ feelings, meaning they are not
actually fully honest representations of real people because
they do not reflect the many emotions essential to the story.
Had Fabian allowed his actors to reach a little bit more in
their work—perhaps embellishing, but discovering greater truths
in the process—Skin would’ve
been a better movie. Given Sophie Okenedo’s previous
performances, we all know that she especially could’ve turned a
good lead performance into a tour-de-force had the movie’s style
and structure provided her more room to roam.
Alas, Skin is
a lot like many of the other films that have been made about the
atrocities committed in Africa’s recent history, but not nearly
as inspired as the most memorable ones. Viewers interested in
the general subject-matter will do far better renting the
Okonedo-starrer Hotel
Rwanda or,
for South Africa specifically, Tsotsi.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 11.8.2008
Screened on:
11.3.2008 at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood, CA.
Skin is rated PG-13 and runs 107
minutes.
Back to Home