Skin tells the true story of Sandra Laing (played affectingly in childhood by Ella Ramangwane and Sophie Okonedo as an adult), a black woman born to white parents in apartheid-era South Africa. Which, as you can imagine, didn't go down well. Sam Neill and Alice Kreig star as Abraham and Sannie, Sandra's parents. Sannie denies that she had an affair with a black man and when Sandra's younger brother is born, looking like Abraham but sharing his sister's darker complexion and curly hair, her story would seem to bear out.
Both Abraham and Sannie were vehement racists and supporters of the apartheid system - Abraham, the more virulently racist of the pair, is shown refusing even to touch the hands of the blacks who patronise his shop - and it is through the life of this family that we are given an insight into the devastating consequences of apartheid. Abraham refused to see his daughter as anything other than white, battling to get her legally reclassified as such. The couple are seen taking the matter to court, with support from doctors who testified to Sandra's polygenic inheritance and the veracity of Abraham's claim to be her biological father. One shocking scene shows the extent to which this affects the tormented Sandra, as she tries to bleach her own skin.
The film later shows Sandra's love affair with a black man, Petrus (Tony Kgoroge), after a series of excruciating dates with dull or frankly repellent white men orchestrated by her parents. The affair was to be the undoing of her relationship with Abraham and Sannie, whose innate bigotry and racism led to them disowning their daughter and her subsequent battle to reclassify herself as coloured, in order to live legally with her husband and children. The film ends with Sandra leaving the increasingly violent Petrus, whose alcohol abuse and resentment of his wife's white heritage threaten to crush her spirit. She reunites with her by then aged, ailing mother and we see her vote in the first free elections, but this is a phyrric victory to say the least - Sandra is presented as someone who has never felt she belonged to either whites or blacks, who has lost both her parents and sense of firm identity by virtue of being born in the wrong time. Her struggle to find a place where she feels belonging is at the emotional heart of this deeply moving story.
The verbal abuse and stares levelled at the young Sandra are shocking to witness and it's perhaps hard for a modern audience to truly appreciate the level of racism perpetrated by white South Africans at the time - we live in a world with a bi-racial President after all. However the force her story carries today is powerful and reminds us clearly of the putrifying, corrosive nature of racism and bigotry, which still have the insidious power to infect our world. Nowhere is this clearer than in Sam Neill's brilliantly complex portrayal of Abraham. One scene depicts him lovingly applying skin lightening cream to his daughter's face, in a revolting demonstration of his ingrained racism which nonetheless still presents him as a loving father. Likewise, we are not given the 'happy' ending we expect from Sannie. If this were fiction, perhaps she would abandon her husband's cruelties for the sake of her daughter, but we are dealing with real people after all and she doesn't act in ways we would wish her too, despite her obvious love for Sandra. Sannie and Abraham's relationship and the fragile trust between them is an acting masterclass from Neill and Kreig, but it is Okenedo - herself of mixed race and perhaps someone who has experienced racism firsthand - who steals the show. Her accent may falter at times, but this is immaterial as we watch her emote for one hundred percent of her screen time. Sandra's experiences are so raw and so real, lacking the histrionics one expects of biopics of this nature, that they actually hit us in the gut more forcibly as a result. I was in floods of tears by the end of this movie and Okenedo is in no small part responsible for this. Sandra's story would be moving no matter who was portraying it, but Okenedo makes us feel she is Sandra; she picks up beautifully from where the appealing Ramangwane leaves off and conveys strength and tenacity ('Never give up'), but also timidity in her shy and hunched posture. She is particularly good when playing the teenage Sandra, conveying a typical teenage resentment which is compounded by her frustrating situation.
This is a movie about race and identity, humanity, and the enduring quality of one woman's spirit. Through Sandra's narrative we are given a personalised, deeply moving history lesson which will not be forgotten. Anthony Fabian's direction implicitly knows that less is more and that this is a performance-led piece, so thankfully he omits any manipulative scores and allows his characters to condemn themselves without a heavy-handed script or lecture. I gather that some liberties may have been taken in the treatment of the reunion between Sandra and her mother, and that perhaps there was less of a resolution in reality than was depicted on screen, but can't criticise the film for this as on the whole it feels very respectful.
Skin is real in a way not many movies are, and is perhaps the finest example of independent film making I've seen in a while. This is story which needed to be told and which, in the hands of Fabian, is told well. I hope that Sandra Laing herself, still alive and living in Dalprak, Gauteng province, is happy with the final result. Though she serves as a personal and powerful indictment of South Africa's bloody past, Fabian is careful not to mythologise her - this is a woman who has endured and survived, and wishes to live quietly, not be a spokesperson for her generation.
Moving, politically aware and sophisticated film-making with superior performances all round - I highly recommend this movie.
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