It’s hard to believe that it’s only been 15 years since the end of Apartheid in South Africa. On film and on television, it’s a subject that’s been covered and discussed so endlessly that by now, it’s almost a cliché. Skin is the latest entry in the Apartheid really sucked genre but with a twist: It’s not about the broader picture of racism but focused on one particularly oddity of the system. It’s almost like watching Apartheid filtered through the lens of Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
Sandra Lang was born in South Africa to racist, white parents. She doesn’t look white. Instead Sandra appears to be black, though her mother insists that she’s always been faithful to her father. Her father believes it and at first so does the government. Despite her appearance she’s classified as white. Everything’s fine until she starts school where, other children and parents are scandalized. The laws of Apartheid are designed to keep whites and blacks completely separate. Sandra may be white, but she looks black and so she’s soon kicked out of the school and reclassified as colored. Thus being her father’s unending fight to get her reclassified. He succeeds, she’s reclassified as white, but that doesn’t mean she fits in.
Sandra doesn’t fit in anywhere and we watch as she struggles in a world where there is no acceptance for her. Eventually she falls in love with a black man, but having a black daughter hasn’t made her father any less a racist. She’s driven out of her home to live in the massive, black slums of the country where her black husband soon begins to resent her and she’s still unable to find a home.
Sandra’s story is both bizarre, touching, and utterly true. It’s also a completely unique way to look at the problems of racism, worth watching, but not without problems. For instance we see almost nothing of Sandra’s school life, only the very beginnings of her problems there. It’s hard not to wonder what forces might have shaped this girl. How did her classmates react to her after years spent with her? Did she have any friends? Was she ever able to overcome their racism? We don’t know. Instead Sandra leaps from precocious child to an adult, full formed. Sophie Okoneado plays Sandra as an adult, and she never quite fits as the character. Her performance seems mostly limited to muttering under her breath and looking at the ground when people talk to her. I can understand someone like Sandra becoming and introvert, but Sophie could have found other ways to breathe life into her performance. The Sandra she portrays comes off almost like a robot.
Luckily the movie’s other performances are everything Sophie’s is not. Sam Neill in particular is gripping as her father Abraham Lang, his performance and his character dominates the film, even when he’s not on screen. Skin is worth seeing, if nothing else as a strange little curiosity, but it’s not the life changing movie it seems to want to be.
