Family First

Paul Eilers’ Verraaiers is a long film. At two hours, it feels like three. This Bosbok Ses production is overall a more merit worthy experience than Roepman, their previous film I liked but a film I found to be too whimsical and spiritually thin for its own good. Verraaiers is, for better and for worse, a more grounded experience, an exploration of loyalty and betrayal against the backdrop of the South African War (Anglo-Boer War).

At the centre of events is Jacobus van Aswegen (a strong Gys de Villiers), who with his sons – including Vilje Maritz – fight the British until he starts to question the wisdom of their involvement in the conflict. With the implementation of Kitchener’s scorched earth policy, whereby farms were burned down and women and children taken to concentration camps, Van Aswegen decides to rather stay at home with his wife (Rika Sennett) and daughters (including Roepman’s Beate Olwagen) so that he can be there to protect them if necessary. This decision is seen as betrayal by some of the Boer authorities and before long Jacobus and his kin (and some friends) are arrested and set to stand trial on charges of treason.

The first part of the film is the narrative and thematic set-up and provides a clear idea of why some Boers decided to personally withdraw from the war even if they supported the effort as a whole. The second part of the film concerns the trial, and is a complete slog to sit through. When the trial-part of the film begins, the film has nothing else to focus on, no B-storyline to alternate with the trial-storyline. So, for nearly an hour we see the men worry, talk to the Boer authorities, question themselves and so on. There are some cutaways to the women all alone at the homestead, but those quickly become pointless due to a specifically bizarre scene which suggests something completely unconvincing about the Boer women in question, particularly the mother.

Then we’re back with the men who sit and toil and wonder their way to an unsurprising ending. Half the film is thus claustrophobic and constraining without visual reference to whatever else is happening while the protagonists are imprisoned – why are we not shown the scorched earth policy in practice? – and the film grinds to a halt. In films such as Der Untergang (Downfall) such characteristics – claustrophobia; constraint; a focus on a specific small group of characters – were beneficial in sustaining suspense and a sense of foreboding, but in Verraaiers their sum total is tedium. There’s something in the combination of shot selection, editing and the screenplay that severely undermines the film, something I hope will become clearer to me in a second or third viewing (which I’m not looking forward to, given how leaden half of the film is). 

Johan Baird and Stian Bam are solid in important supporting roles, but there are odd character moments that don’t convince, such as an early scene with Carel Trichardt as a judge wondering aloud (as if on stage) about loyalty and betrayal, somewhat clumsily foregrounding the film’s themes. Yet it’s the pacing that remains the biggest problem. I’ve seen war films that go on for three hours; I’ve seen hour upon hour of Tarr and Tarkovsky and am all the better for it. Those films, regardless of their running time, have a poetry to their images that is undeniable, and often, to me personally, unshakeable. Maybe that’s why Verraaiers felt so long and seemed so lifeless as it continued: it is so sincere, so focused on representing history in a functional and visually instrumental manner, that, to its detriment, it fundamentally lacks a sense of imagistic poetry. 

Paternity Matters

I could write a combo-review of Saak van Geloof ("A Matter of Faith") and Jakhalsdans. Both are Afrikaans dramas set in sparsely populated, small South African towns. Jakhalsdans, about a reclusive musician who comes out of hiding in support of a school fundraiser, is set in Loxton and directed by Darrell James Roodt (Yesterday, Faith’s Corner). Saak van Geloof, a religious drama about faith and family, is set in Prins Albert and directed by Diony Kempen, who produced Jakhalsdans. Both films are shot by Andrew Tolmay. Both films represent some of the worst that Afrikaans drama has to offer.

One the one hand, there’s very little to say about Jakhalsdans. It stars Theuns Jordaan and is, to my eternal shock and disbelief, written by well-regarded crime novelist Deon Meyer. It has one of the worst endings in recent memory, a slap in the face of everyone who came to see the film based on its musical promise. It’s all build-up and no pay-off. It took me three attempts to finish the film. It is tedious, badly written, cheap looking and insulting to moviegoers as well as Afrikaans music lovers. The dialogue is as solid as a Karoo rock, by which I mean that it’s heavy, lacking in colour, and that it sinks.

There’s a little more to say about Saak van Geloof, though not necessarily in a good way. Lelia Etsebeth stars as Marietjie Naude, the daughter of Kallie (Robbie Wessels) and Ella (Riana Nel). Shortly before Christmas, Marietjie tells her parents that she’s pregnant, and that the father is none other than the Holy Spirit. Soon the entire town is gossiping about their own immaculate conception while the Calvinist minister (Niekie van den Berg) attempts an intervention.

Due to their similar ages, the three main actors look like siblings; whoever cast this film must suffer from a sight impediment. Also, Nel’s performance is the worst – the worst – performance by a female actor in an Afrikaans film I have ever seen. At least Lika Berning got to occasionally look cute in Liefling, and Jakhalsdans’s Elizma Theron, while robotic, at least delivered her lines with a modicum of intent. Granted, the dialogue in Saak van Geloof is horrid. Much of it sounds made-up on the spot.

I pity the actors for having to wrestle with such bad writing, uninspired plotting and shallow characterisation. The scene where Kallie, having struggled with his faith for a while now, receives an affirmative sign from above is an unintentionally bizarre and funny scene. Miscast and misdirected, the actors stumble from scene to scene aiming at moments of serenity and profundity but arriving at absurdity and foolishness instead. Etsebeth is the only one who delivers something close to a heartfelt performance in spite of how stilted her character often comes across. And Van den Berg’s minister Botha is a clichéd mess prone to over delivery: “This … is a matter… of faith!” Spelling out its themes in capital letters, the film is too simple-minded to offend or stimulate.

I welcome any film that engages religious discourse in a serious minded, informed manner. Bringing Christian discourse into more contemporary settings can be thought provoking (see Pialat’s Under Satan’s Sun) and fascinating (Dornford-May’s Son of Man), not to mention Denys Arcand's superlative Jesus of Montreal. Anyone venturing into evangelical filmmaking surely knows the company they are in, so why produce such a bland drama? Measured against similarly themed films, Saak van Geloof, with its superficial spiritual veneer and misguided messiah motif, is plain ridiculous.

(Note: a fun way of watching a movie is to play a drinking game where you take shot of mampoer – and it has to be mampoer - whenever an extra looks into the camera.)

Artificial sweetener

Semi-Soet is South Africa’s very first post-transitional Afrikaans romantic comedy in the most Hollywood sense of the word. The leads are attractive, the story improbable, the humour often forced; the locations are breathtakingly beautiful; mistaken identities and misunderstandings abound. The formula is as old as classical cinema itself. Director Joshua Rous does not seek to undermine the formula in any way - the film even has a "wild animal" moment - but his command of the Hollywood romcom form is sure and confident. It's a lightweight mix of A Walk in the Clouds meets The Proposal.

Jaci van Jaarsveld (Anel Alexander) works for the ad company Mojo. To her boss’s (Corine du Toit) concern, a corporate cannibal nicknamed The Jackal (Nico Panagio) has indicated that he wants to buy out the company, which leads to large scale retrenchment. When The Jackal arrives for a meeting with Mojo, Jaci mistakes him for someone else and before you know it, Jaci and her corporate nemesis are on their way to a romantic business weekend (!) at Vrede & Rust wine estate. 

In tow are the obligatory supporting characters, with Sandra Vaughn as Jaci’s chirpy sidekick and Louw Venter as Hertjie, The Jackal’s lawyer colleague who here poses as a gay stylist. 7de Laan’s Diaan Lawrenson also appears as Jaci’s ex-boyfriend’s (Paul du Toit) current squeeze, the dim Chadrie. Although her character has little to do, seeing as she plays the consummate blonde bimbo, Lawrenson has one of the film’s best timed comic reactions.

Speaking of stereotypes: how unfortunate that Semi-Soet would resort to so many of them, especially of the gay variety. Surely there’s a romantic comedy that can work without indulging redundant gender stereotypes? So much of the film offers a viable Afrikaans complement to American romcoms that such a major misstep is indeed disheartening. Jodi Abrahams is a fine actor (he was one of the highlights in the TV series Hard Copy), and his talents are wasted as he prances around as an camp model agent.

If you’ve seen a couple of American romcoms you know what to expect, but to their credit the creative team keeps the film engaging for most of its running time (starting with some inventive opening credits). As the film nears its end, things get too farfetched and simultaneously old fashioned as the film utilises the type of plot developments that characterised much of 1990s sitcom fare. Regardless, the film puts some of its American contemporaries to shame; it beats genre prototypical drivel like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days with ease.

Verlange

Katinka Heyns’s first film in well over a decade, Die Wonderwerker (The Miracle Worker), is an engaging character drama built around a specific period in the life of South African poet and naturalist Eugene Marais (1871-1936), played here by Dawid Minnaar in one of the best performances of his career. Die Wonderwerker also provides Eliza Cawood with some powerful scenes where she mostly underplays much of the character Maria’s anxieties, and while many have complained about Anneke Weideman’s Jane, I have to admit that I was neither blown away nor offended by her performance. The way some people talk about her you’d swear the character is expected to be an essayist whose tour de force on Darwin got published at puberty instead of the immature 19-year old farm girl the film gives us.

En route to Nylstroom, Marais arrives on the Van Rooyen farm with malaria and the family take him in to see to his recovery. Marais’s presence intensifies tensions that are already present: Maria and her husband Gys (Marius Weyers) have not seen eye to eye for a while, and their son Adriaan (Kaz McFadden) has an unhealthy interest in young Jane Brayshaw, the Van Rooyens' adopted daughter. As these characters turn to each other Marais turns mostly to himself – he is addicted to morphine – until he starts to see Jane as possibly more than just a young girl.

Koos Roets, recipient of a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Cape Winelands Film Festival, remains a consummate cinematographer; Die Wonderwerker looks great, with a deeper colour depth than many other Afrikaans films. And how refreshing to see an Afrikaans film that does not feature that annoying sped-up day-to-darkness shots to indicate the passage of time.

I have major issues with Heyns’s previous work, and this film isn’t flawless, but it’s as if all of her films have lead to this moment: while the earlier films tick most of the features of old fashioned classical filmmaking, Die Wonderwerker is superb classical filmmaking. This film is far more successful at mastering this approach to storytelling than Roepman. Between all the formulaic storytelling and moments of indulgent exposition, Heyns delivers a memorable portrait of Marais constructed around her favourite theme: the outsider who brings turmoil and change into the Afrikaans nuclear family.

It’s a very specific portrait of Marais, and listening to people’s responses to the character construction I was reminded of Roger Ebert’s lukewarm review of Iris¸ the biopic of Iris Murdoch that I quite liked. To paraphrase Ebert: Iris is a wonderful film, but it’s not about the Iris he knew and loved. I suspect the same applies to Die Wonderwerker: it’s a depiction of Marais that may not positively correspond with how many see and appreciate the historical figure. Nonetheless, even those unmoved by the film’s version of Marais should recognise that between some over manipulative moments, Die Wonderwerker has greater emotional resonance than any of Heyns’s previous films.It is one of the best Afrikaans language films of the past few years.

The Howling

Wolwedans in die Skemer, the new Afrikaans thriller directed by Jozua Malherbe, starts with an intriguing premise based on memory loss and past and present trauma but becomes increasingly dependent on genre clichés towards the end. In spite of some interesting revelations towards the climax, the film falls flat on a narrative level; on a technical level, some cinematographic flair injects the visuals with some dynamism.

(minor possible spoilers follow)

Sonja Daneel (Rolanda Marais) loses her memory in a car crash. The management of the local Hotel Njala take her in, given that she was on her way to start working there as receptionist when the accident occurred. Of the hotel staff, Adele (Desire Gardiner) is cold and corporate; her sister Maggie (Lelia Etsebeth) is a sensitive, quiet counter; their father Jan (Andre Roothman) is strangely distanced and estranged from the mother (Riana Wilkens). The tour guide Ryno (David Louw) is a bit of a player; girls seem to clamour for his attention. He has eye on Adele, but Sonja’s arrival provides a new point of interest. In addition to Sonja, a red-hooded, axe-wielding figure also makes his appearance at Hotel Njala.

The film looks good, has an attractive cast and a beautiful Hazyview setting. I don’t feel qualified in commenting on the acting except to say that the actors do what they can with thinly drawn characters: Adele is Cold, Jan is Eccentric, Maggie is Soft, and Sonja is Absent. We never really get to align ourselves with Sonja since she is such a passive character. For someone who repeatedly states that she doesn't know who she is, she does not seem too focused on finding out. Paradoxically, Ryno is the most rounded character, yet there is no clear reason why numerous girls would be so interested in him. He’s amiable enough, but the motivation behind Adele's evident infatuation remains a bit of a mystery.

Given how Wolwedans is framed as a thriller the film is bizarrely inert, balancing romance (an attempted love triangle), family drama and thriller conventions. It's the latter that causes some problems: for example, the hooded killer suddenly appears in front of the camera and is accompanied every time by an explosion of musical cues. (In his heyday, M. Night Shyamalan as well as Spanish filmmakers Alejandro Amenabar and JS Bayona demonstrated the power of musical restraint in scenes of tension.)

Such reliance on overly familiar genre conventions make the film seem somewhat dated and compromises its suspense. Indeed, the film could have worked as a powerful period thriller – think Red Riding Trilogy – with Sonja’s amnesia and the killings set against the backdrop of politically tumultuous South Africa. Why, after all the self-aware genre commentary of Scream and other titles from the pre-torture porn 1990s  thriller-horror revival, and also in the aftermath of The Descent, Wolwedans still uses some of the same visual and narrative devices that those films decried.

To illustrate: thrillers often feature the damsel in distress running away from her killer. To the exasperation of the audience, two things happen. Firstly, the fleeing girl runs to the least safe place available (that is, away from light, away from crowds) instead of to somewhere safe and populated. Secondly, the girl’s pursuer walks while the intended victim runs. Finally, both end up in the same place within seconds of one another. Then, having cornered the intended victim, the killer does not proceed to just kill the victim but first engages the victim in some expository conversation; Roger Ebert refers to this as the fallacy of the talking killer.

Wolwedans is too reliant on such conventions in creating tension, and it undermines the impact of the revelations accompanying the ending. That said, the ending is unpredictable enough and delivers exciting moments that demonstrates some considerable acting skills.  

All in all, as a locally produced genre film, the polished Wolwedans in die Skemer is a vast improvement on Night Drive even if it too does not invigorate the thriller genre.

Ek Lief Jou. Ek Lief Kaas. Ek Lief Drank.

There are three scenes from the Kurt Darren starring romantic drama Ek Lief Jou that I will use as keys to discuss the film. I can state up front that the film is badly written and shoddily executed, and unless you’re interested in minor curiosities of contemporary South African cinema, it is best avoided. 

Darren stars as Dirk, a South African singer making it big in Belgium where he promotes a competition for women where the winner will star opposite him in his latest music video. As evidence that films seldom know what journalists really do, a hot reporter, Anna (Ilse de Vis) is assigned to travel to South Africa and to cover the competition. She’s also supposed to find some dirt on Dirk to find a ‘real’ story, something scandalous that her boss (director Ate de Jong) will approve of. Allow me to propose a drinking game: every time Anna says, “I’m a journalist, that’s what I do!”, take a shot. It will improve the viewing experience considerably, and raise it from “unbearable” to just “terrible”. 

It makes sense that we expect Anna and Dirk to fall in love somewhere along the line. What doesn’t make sense if why Dirk, who is devoid of personality but seems like a nice enough (if dim) guy, would be in a relationship with a capitalist succubus played by (former?) model Christina Storm. Also present is Andre Frauenstein, who played Goku in Eternity and now has two dreadful movies under his belt in which he co-stars with Storm. 

Scene 1: The Non-existent Waterfall 

Much of the film is set in a game lodge in Limpopo. At one stage, the characters take to the dirt roads on bicycles, and that’s how Dirk and Anna end up at a nearby waterfall, or as I refer to it, “the small stream spilling over the edge of a hill”. The filmmakers shoot the poor waterfall as if it’s the most irrelevant waterfall in the history of cinema: a small, unimpressive spot in a background so smoothed out and graded during postproduction that the entire background of trees, water and earth blend together like a failed watercolour experiment. It looks like a deleted scene from What Dreams May Come 2: Lovin' Limpopo. 

Scene 2: A Boy and His Bottle

Storm’s character Lisa Snyders and Dirk’s brother Danie have a strange relationship best explained by the psycho-dynamics of sado-masochism. Maybe because she is Dirk’s manager, little brother is willing to act submissive towards Lisa – but only to a point. While at the lodge, Lisa requests some sherry. Danie is initially reluctant to fetch her some but ends up liberating an entire bottle from the bar. He is then witness to something he was not supposed to see that involves Lisa, and to punish her pours out some of the alcohol only to fill the bottle up again with his own urine. He offers some to Lisa, but we know that he doesn’t know that she saw him pee in the sherry. She invites him to help himself to a drink, and watches him gulp down his own piss. It’s a long, bizarre scene, made even stranger by the fact that Danie has to pull his pants down to his knees to enable the bottle-filling to occur. This leads to repeated shots of Frauenstein’s rear, so much so that I began to apprehensively anticipate a reverse full frontal. We were spared that, but not the consumption of urine. 

Scene 3: The Exposed

All the main characters and some secondary ones are involved in a playful touch rugby match. Lisa does not like the fact that Anna seems to have developed a crush on Dirk, and during the game she does something to distract everyone from the Belgian journalist (“It’s what I do!”). In the midst of a line-up, as she is lifted high in the air to catch the ball, Lisa instead pulls down her blouse low enough to flash both breasts. This isn’t just a cleavage moment; for a second, you’re squaring off with the Storm nipples. It’s cheap and gratuitous, an ill-intentioned stunt that was never going to work cinematically, and provides a useful key to the film: Ek Lief Jou forces one badly written, unbearable scene after the other onto you to the point where you cannot believe what you’re seeing, and then you look away disgusted. You look away. 

Ek Lief Jou is a very bad movie, and its title phrase (a low level version of "I love you") is never even used in the film. Nor do we see, for that matter, the music video that the film uses in its premise. Indeed, much in the film is outside the frame, such as some off-screen hyenas that just fuel an already awful performance from Storm as she pretend-panics and pretend-throws rocks at them. Ek Lief Jou tries so hard to be sweet and romantic, and De Vis is likeable enough as a female interest, but in the end there’s not enough liquor (urine-infused or not) in the world to make Ek Lief Jou’s degenerate and undercooked attempts at humour palatable.

There can be only one (let's hope)

 

Hoofmeisie, a new Afrikaans tween comedy by Morne du Toit and the team from the Film Factory (purveyors of Bakgat, Bakgat 2, Night Drive and Superhelde), got a rave review from one Afrikaans speaking critic and was lambasted by another critic in the Mail & Guardian who referred to the film as “impossible to watch”. Maybe what these critics and I should admit up front is that we’re not the target market for the film, having passed through primary school many, many years ago. This tale of a bunch of girls (and their mothers - where have all the fathers gone?) competing for the title of “hoofmeisie”, or head girl (the highest rung on the student representative council ladder), is clearly aimed at a very young audience indeed. However, old(er) as we may be, we do have something to say about the difference between good children’s entertainment and bad children’s entertainment. The best children’s entertainment works on most levels for most audiences as there’s something to appreciate for just about everyone. Surely no-one but the very, very young appreciates a mother squeezing out her daughter’s zit only to have its yellow content splash her soccer-mom face? 

Many American tween comedies are also mediocre, but it’s so much more unfortunate that Du Toit and his team chose to borrow from and imitate the worst that the tween comedy genre has to offer: badly written young romance, one-dimensional characters, psycho mothers. It ends up being very predictable, even for a film of its type.

Nadia (Misha’el de Beer) is a sweet natured, intelligent learner at Stumbo Pops Primary. Her BFF is the equally sweet Melissa (Annemicke Kotze) and her secret crush is Rikus (Ruan Wessels), who plays rugby. Thankfully the movie spares us a scene set at a primary school level rugby match, though it gives us instead a netball scene where the players and parents get so worked up that the coach turns a fire extinguisher on them. There are two main antagonists on the netball court and in the rest of the film: Susan (Melissa Massyn), who is sometimes referred to as Su-Satan, and Hetwieg (Jamie Lawrence). These are the girls who the movie shows as in being in contention the head girl title.

The good news, for what it’s worth, is that there are no fart jokes. There are one or two blink-and-you-miss-it attempts at satire. And the young actors are for most part amusing and entertaining, especially Melissa Massyn who on occasion displays a greater sense of comic timing than any adult actor in the film. Poor Hannes Muller. Poor Lida Botha, who seems to play the hyper caricatured version of the grandmother in Roepman. Poor Johan van der Merwe, who plays the stuttering Stumbo Pops principal, Mr Gouws, and ends up with cake on his face. This is a bad film with usually good actors.

How can I say whether a tween audience will think of the film as bad? I cannot, but I did watch the film with an audience consisting of parents and their children, and while there were a few chuckles here and there, there was absolutely no sustained laughter. There are a few jokes aimed at older viewers, but these fall flat; weren’t Malema jokes old a year ago?

There’s a moral to the story that parents will appreciate, I suppose; be true to yourself, be nice to your friends, don’t be nasty to your enemies, and so forth. But in between all of this, there’s a bizarre scene between Mr Gouws and a cleaner (from what I can tell), a young black woman who replaces a photo of Gouws with a framed photograph of Nelson Mandela. This apparently teaches him about merit and doing what’s right. There’s nothing wrong with the sentiment, but the film handles it in such an amateurish fashion it’s cringe worthy – consider how we are supposed to believe that a previously “invisible” black character suddenly initiates change in a middle aged white man’s life. I guess I should mention that the most openly violent and destructive character in the film is Hetwieg, who is non-white; of the four main young females, she also has the least dialogue.

Equally embarrassing is the film’s attempts at safe religiosity. When the film opens, we learn that Nadia is an orphan who resides with her grandmother (Marie Pentz). When Nadia tells her that her parents are looking down at them from heaven, Grandma confesses that she doesn’t believe in “the Bethlehem star” anymore. Surely it is not a spoiler when I say that the film provides an opportunity for Grandma to reconsider this position. Why on earth bring in this theme if you only spend two sentences on it? And such badly written sentences at that? Indeed, the film spends more time on Isak Davel in a red speedo.

Hoofmeisie is a threadbare story that has more product placements than a Bond movie; indeed, there is a scene set during the school’s Entrepreneurial Day that seems to be in the film only to throw together a few brands (and, lest I forget, to get Isak Davel in a speedo). Talking about odd creative decisions: the film tells the majority of its story in flashback, taking its cue from, can you believe it, The Usual Suspects. Where it served a purpose in the latter crime classic, there is no reason why Hoofmeisie should be told like this. The kid behind me told his father that he “didn’t know what is going on”.

I wish I could tell you good things about Hoofmeisie, but I cannot. It’s not enough to have a comedy in Afrikaans; it has to be a funny comedy in Afrikaans. It seems as if too many Afrikaans speaking people are willing to spend money and time on Afrikaans products simply because it’s in Afrikaans and not necessarily because it’s a good film. I’m sure that many people have enjoyed and will enjoy Hoofmeisie with their families in the name of good, clean family viewing, but to those people I want to say: have you seen Whale Rider, The Sandlot, Millions, The Princess Bride? I’ll concede that these movies are not in Afrikaans but they’re much, much better than Hoofmeisie if family viewing is what you’re looking for.

Woerwoer

Paul Eilers’ “Roepman”, an Afrikaans drama adapted from the book by Jan van Tonder, is as polished and well crafted a South African film as one is likely to see. The camerawork is outstanding, the editing fluid. “Roepman” has been called the best Afrikaans film yet; we’re talking about over a century’s worth of movie output, so it’s quite a claim. It’s certainly one of the best Afrikaans movies ever released, and it’s certainly better than “Paljas”. Scratch that; despite its flaws, which I’ll get to, “Roepman” is one of the best South African films yet, and stands shoulder to shoulder with the Oscar-winning “Tsotsi”. Eilers’ film comfortably shifts from the sentimental and the humourous to the political and the downright shocking. 

“Roepman” recreates a key period from South African history, and places its characters against a backdrop of political conservatism and preservation. “Roepman” excels at evoking time and place. It is 1966. Timus (Paul Loots) is the youngest child of a large Durban-based Afrikaans family, which includes two sisters and an older brother. Like many white Afrikaans men of the time, his father works in the rail industry, and his mother stays home. There is a black woman who helps to keep the house neat and clean. Timus is somewhat fascinated by Joon (John-Henry Opperman), the titular character, who is a “call man” employed to make sure that rail workers wake up in time to get to work on time. 

To Timus, Joon is a great young man who has saved Timus’ life on occasion. Timus is growing up – there’s some foregrounding about the loss of innocence – and his siblings have their own stories: brother Braam (Eddie de Jager) may or may not be in love with the girl next door, while his sisters (Beate Olwagen and Desire Gardner) have boyfriend and independence issues. Father (Deon Lotz) keeps a firm hand on the family, with mother (Rike Sennett) as mediator between the patriarch and his children. Lida Botha co-stars in the archetypal wise old woman role as the grandmother. 

The film opens with Timus running through the train yard in tears, and the film builds up to that moment for most of its running time. One senses the coming of something ominous early on, and I’m not just talking about the black-and-white photograph of Verwoerd keeping a watchful eye on whatever happens in the living room. There are dodgy characters, such as the grease ball boyfriend (Altus Theart) of Braam’s potential love interest and the gang of young men who spend their time walking around town, reading Playboy and being assholes. It is their leader, Hein (Andrew Thompson), who tells Timus that he’ll be a man only when he “pisses foam”.

As a family drama, “Roepman” is stellar. The story is gripping and, as I said earlier, the film is very well made. It is aware of the politics of the time, and effectively uses it to outline key events in the characters’ lives. When it ends, the film refuses easy answers in favour of emphasising the loss of innocence once more.

If so much of “Roepman” works, what holds it back from greatness? I’ll do my best to steer clear from spoilers.

(1) It is clear that Hein is going to be some sort of villain in the movie. This is an important character filled with insecurity and with a certain pathological element, but the character is totally flat. There’s nothing to Hein, and it doesn’t help that he wears black - if memory serves – in every single scene he appears in. I would also suggest that the role was miscast, but let’s leave it at that.

(2) Despite solid acting from Lotz, the conservative Afrikaner father leans towards caricature. Here “Paljas” actually has the edge; Marius Weyers’s Afrikaner father had a little dimension.

(3) The film is good at developing a sense of dread, and it handles the eventual payoff with great success. However, these darkly dramatic scenes are contrasted with scenes so whimsical that it requires considerable suspension of disbelief.

(4) The film oversells Joon as messianic figure, especially in a shot of a statue of Christ on the cross that has particular significance for the film’s later developments. Like the black-clad Hein, this too seems spelled out.

(5) The “all you need to do is believe” mantra is thin. While certain characters can get away with it when it is appropriate to the plot and emotional payoff, I’m not so sure you could, for example, tell the family’s live-in maid to “just believe and it will happen” with Verwoerd frowning at you. And considering what happens to a major character just before this message is overtly promoted for the last time, it rings rather hollow.

A final word. Director Eilers has a small appearance as the local minister, and in two minutes shows why he’s considered to be such an incredible actor.

Anus

I watched "Stoute Boudjies" because I had to. Let's leave it at that.

I approached the film with trepidation, as I usually avoid Willie Esterhuizen's movies due to their lower-than-lowest-common-denominator approach to comedy. The closest I usually get to this type of comedy is "Bakgat", which by comparison looks like Von Trier's latest filmic bombast. On a previous effort, "Poena is Koning", a friend commented how it's not just the sexism that's bad in his movies; it's also the blatant racism and fattism that get you. "Stoute Boudjies" features rampant sexism, as well as fattism (guess who's the perpetual loser?) and racism. (If an actor of colour willingly participates in a film like this for a paycheck, what do we do with the notion of racism?)

Some background: Esterhuizen was a successful showman who was responsible for two favourite Afrikaans sitcoms, "Orkney Snork Nie" (Woepsie-wapsie!) and later the lesser but still successful "Vetkoetpaleis". Nothing he's done since has reached the level of popularity that those shows obtained in the 1990s. As for his film work, it was his "Lipstiek Dipstiek" in the mid 1990s that made sex part of popular braaivleis discourse. It was OK to talk about genitals now, since it's funny; Seff Effrica would never be the same again. Given how conservative most of South African entertainment was until 1994, Esterhuizen did break some new ground, even if it was limited to how much naked flesh you could get away with on screen. It was "Last Tango in Joburg" for the Afrikaans adult comedy crowd, but without sophistication.

Afrikaans isn't a world language, and the lighter-skinned group of people who speak it constitutes a minority in South Africa. Yet some Afrikaans filmmakers, Esterhuizen among them, choose to give local audiences comedies that are vulgar for vulgarity's sake alone, regardless of the stereotypes perpetuated for the sake of a cheap laugh. Why marginalise a minority in this way, showing them to be incapable of nearly  everything, including sexual activity? Certainly, it seems as if many of the stereotypes and cliches are lifted from equally bad American teen comedies, but those seldom look as inept and on-the-fly as this film.

I got the following plot synopsis from the Nu Metro website:

HARDUS, is a third year computer sciences student who lives in Johannesburg with his divorcee mother, Madelet (played by Dorette Nel). Hardus has to find work for the varsity holiday to earn his keep, but at his age, he is more interested in losing his virginity than finding a job. "Madelet" rhymes with "slet", Afrikaans for "slut". I guess it's funny.

His best friend and comrade in arms, VAATJIE VISAGIE, played by Gerhard Odendaal, does little to help in the virginity stakes, but does provide an opportunity to work as a washer at Mr. De Vries's bakery. Mr. De Vries (played by actor Matt Stern) sends them on an errand that proves to be much more adventurous that any of them could have imagined. Here, Vaatjie (from "Vaatjies Sien Sy Gat") is an obesity-stereotype, while Matt Stern's De Vries is an effeminate annoyance. 

PETRO, played by the stunning Angelique Pretorius, (a former FHM model of the year) impacts hugely on Hardus's life. He not only finds himself totally besotted with her but when they end up in bed together, Hardus's world, gets turned upside down. This is mainly because Petro's boyfriend, Harley Davidson biker OS, (played by macho man Asley Saunders), wants to break Hardus's neck for screwing his chick. The fact that she no longer happens to be his girl, does not deter OS from wanting to cause some grievous bodily harm to Hardus.

The film is a hilarious teen sex comedy [it is not "hilarious" unless you're OS's mental cohort], targeted specifically for the young Afrikaans movie going audience [they must think we're idiots]. It is contemporary and truthful version of life in post world cup South Africa [yes, if "contemporary" means "recently released" and "truthful" means "as rubbish as most other teen sexcoms"; I do not see the relevance of the SWC reference]. 

"Stoute Boudjies" makes for depressing viewing. Between the wisecracks and ass-cracks, the film demonstrates there is a place somewhere underneath the bottom of the barrel.

It’s a balloon. Here, I’ll show you.

I recently got the chance to watch the Afrikaans teen-romantic-comedy-with-a-moral-lesson “Bakgat!” and to be quite honest, I think that local critics were too harsh, too hasty in their unsparing damnation of yet "another vulgar, common” teen movie. Yes, but this time they swear, curse and get scatalogical in Afrikaans. Yes, parts of “Bakgat!” are common; other parts are vulgar. However, taken for what it attempts to be, “Bakgat!” is easily more accomplished than many local films.

By basing the film on the Hollywood narrative previously encountered in “She’s All That” and “American Pie” (and many, many others), writer-director Henk Pretorius must’ve known that he was walking into the jaws of the lion from a critical point of view. The movie opens with one piece of clichéd dialogue after the other. Actually, it opens with a statement about how the participating high schools, Waterkloof and Eldoraigne, supported the film’s making in the name of Afrikaans culture – make of that what you want – and then the dialogue begins, along with some typically South African rugby shots. Characters are quickly established, using stereotypes as shortcuts to tell us who to root for and who to dislike. There’s the school honey, the nerd, the rugby overlord, the dimwit girlfriends, the two guys whose aim in teen life is to score.

I liked the way the film poked fun at the snobbish Easterlings of the city and some of the film is surprisingly enjoyable (an antidote to the crime and HIV-driven films that usually get funding in South Africa) and well made. There is no attempt at any notion of realism here; “Bakgat” proceeds to tell its story in an almost exclusively all-white Pretoria, while the only gay guy in the film is played only (and embarrassingly so) for cheap laughs. Of course, the point of this film was never to be ‘realistic’, but to appropriate a global model for telling simple stories to and for a minority group.

For better and for worse, it paid off. A sequel is rumoured to be planned for a festive season release.