'Skin' just not deep enough

The cruelty of the apartheid system won't soon be forgotten, but Skin , the debut feature from director Anthony Fabian, reminds us of its utter absurdity.

The film is based on the true story of Sandra Laing, a story that, as one of the best case studies of the bizarre injustices meted out by our former segregationist government, was picked up by the international media both before and after apartheid.

Sandra, played by British actress Sophie Okonedo (of Hotel Rwanda fame), was an obviously black child born in 1950s South Africa to two white Afrikaners unaware of their black ancestry. The parents are played by Sam Neill (an Aussie) and Alice Krige, who is the only local cast member in a leading role. Sandra's parents, who worked as rural shopkeepers serving the local black community, raised her as a white girl, sending her to white schools.

But the white Afrikaner community was unable to ignore her darker skin and at age 10, Sandra was reclassified as coloured, abandoned by her family and driven out of white society like a leper. With nowhere else to go, Sandra found refuge in the arms of a black man in the local township, but in a tragic twist of fate, she was ultimately deemed too white for township life.

Skin is a straightforward, well-meaning, retelling of these events which traces Sandra's struggle to define herself on her own terms without embellishing the facts of her life, which are dramatic enough as they are. Several scenes in particular are likely to strike a chord with South African audiences: overcome with self-loathing, Sandra attempts to whiten her skin with a concoction of household bleaches. Later, she is presented to white officials for the debasing pencil test, which she fails.

It's a refreshingly personal - as opposed to purely political - perspective on apartheid, but the film doesn't really dig deep enough to add anything to our understanding of the splintered identity of multiracial SA.

The performances don't help much either. Casting big-name foreign actors to draw the crowds has come at the cost of authenticity, particularly in the case of Okonedo, otherwise an engaging screen presence, who spends the majority of the film in stooped silence and doesn't do justice to Sandra's emotional turmoil; and Neill, who has a hard time with his South African accent and an even harder time getting to grips with his character, giving a regrettably over-the-top performance.

This effect is partially mitigated by a solid performance from Krige (in her first South African role since 1975) and Tony Kgoroge. But it's not enough to save Fabian's relatively unambitious film, in form and in content, from being yet another weepy apartheid drama.