Skin (2008)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Sandra Laing should be more widely known in South Africa. I doubt we value the lessons learned from the our own past as we do from school. Imagine a world where you are classified according to what the government laws dictate. That was the reality of Apartheid South Africa.Even in 2013 we see glimpses of this Apartheid mentality because mixed race people in this country seems to have a Pavlovian disposition to feeling inferior and acting that way. The violence among "coloured people" is disproportional higher when looked at prison populations. So this movie is actually an important link between the past, the present and the future of mixed race people in South Africa.What is striking about Sandra Laing is how her parents are both supremely dedicated and yet divided in how they treat their daughter. Everything manages to proceed as planned while she's in school, and even after she's asked to leave the school. Even her older brother stands by her even though he admits it's difficult.How do we break free from our parents, from our roots and discover new ones? There is a Freudian element to Sandra's relationship with her father. He fights for her, he is strong-willed and takes on the government in one scene. Yet, he has doubts about whether she is indeed his biological child. At least this makes him human in sense. The family is surrounded by black people, some as labourers and some as clients in their shop in a rural part of the country.As she matures into a young lady, her father arranges dates for her with young white men. After a terrible incident where she avoids being rapped, she eventually strikes up a sexual relationship with a black man with whom she has two children. His anger sparked by group areas act, and how it was enforced in by the Apartheid government eventually leads to him physically abusing Sandra. She leaves with her children and makes her way to Johannesburg, the big city.The movie ends where it began with the 1994 elections. The dream that was dreamed by her parents is still alive in her, especially her father's motto of "never give up." She tells her mother on her death bed, that was all that kept her going during the 20 years of separation.This is a story that speaks about all those things that makes us human: family, identity, uncertainty, choice and love. Without falling in love with a black man, Sandra would never have discovered herself. Her white father wanted her to be safe, to be protected and the never allowed her to be free, to find her own way.

I finally saw "Skin" last night. I won't recap the story here. I was fascinated by Sandra Liang's heartbreaking experience, but I missed the movie in the theatre. The actors – Neill, Krige, Okonedo and Kgoroge – performed their roles well. The film, overall, is not perfect. I agree that Sophie Okonedo was not completely believable as the teenage Sandra Laing, but that's a small quibble given Okonedo's gargantuan talent.What really saddens me is that so many people are more concerned with debunking the notion that two white-looking people can (biologically) produce a black-looking child than with South Africa's brutal, hateful apartheid regime that tore this family apart, and turned a beautiful young girl's life into a living hell. All of my white friends summarily dismissed Sandra Laing's story and rejected the possibility that it could be true. For them, it's easier to question Sannie Laing's marital fidelity than to keep an open mind about polygenic inheritance (genetic throwback). They should know by now that we don't know everything about genetic curve balls.The scenes that disturbed me the most were 1) Sandra enduring humiliating tests (measuring of her forehead and pencil stuck in her hair), 3) Sandra bleaching and seriously burning her skin with a dangerous homemade concoction of chemicals, and 3) Sandra's realization of her parents' deep denial of their own racism. It was painful to watch her attempt to survive relentless rejection. I'm convinced she loved Petrus in some way, but I believe she may have chosen to go with him at 15 years old to escape daily psychological and emotional torment. Unfortunately, the "one-drop rule" and the notion of white racial purity (tying to white superiority) remain rampant today, and even in the good old US of A. We will likely solve world hunger and cure every disease imaginable before we eradicate that one! Oh, and Tony Kgoroge is gorgeous. He has beautiful skin and a smile that could melt…well, anything! I loved watching him in "Invictus".

Sandra Laing was born to a white mother and father yet she had the skin color of a black person. Although Sandra's mother bore a baby boy that came out to be dark like Sandra, the movie stayed focused on Sandra and the parents. The movie showed that great perseverance can make just as much difference as the obstacles. The plot focused on the obstacle of being colored in a white world or family for that matter as this white family tried to raise their daughter that looked black in South Africa. Black people were being treated as beneath whites but Sandra was taught by her father to "never give up".Sandra's parent had her classified as white with the Government but all of the hardships Sandra and the family face forces Sandra to question her Identity where Sandra eventually finds comfort with a black man names Pedrus. Sandra showed great strength throughout the movie as the movie had highs and lows from fun or intense moments to feeling the sad emotions. It was presented in such a way that the audience could feel what was going on in many scenes. The acting was great with the facial expressions as all of the actors in the movie assumed their character.

"I'm not black!" SandraThe color of Sandra Laing (Sophie Okonedo) colors her life beyond what anyone might dream possible. Born black of white parents Sannie (Alice Krige) and Abraham (Sam Neill), who own a rural general store, Sandra is the center of Skin, a drama played against the harrowing years of Apartheid. She is breaking the law if she lives as a black with whites, so her dad devotes years to have her officially declared white.But even for isolated Afrikaners like the Laings, life is complicated, especially when Sandra falls in love and has a baby with a black farmer, Petrus (Tony Kgoroge). Although the film becomes melodramatic or operatic at times, underneath is a core of truth about a human condition that fosters racial hatred and enslavement even in the modern world. It takes a Mandela to free blacks in Africa, but it is up to the strong of heart like Sandra to make that freedom a reality, day by day.The film, sometimes playing like J. M. Coetzee Coeteze's violent white versus black world, does a credible job showing the contradictions in characters like her dad, who enforces the separation of black and whites but seems to know he is wrong. Yet, he cannot help himself; this is the strength of the film, the consistent struggle between righteous tradition (read separation) and goodness and fairness. Although we know apartheid will end, and Abraham will be a victim of his own willfulness, the film manages to retain the sense of futility for blacks, artistically not easy to do when history has made its statement.The goodness often manifests itself in her mother, a loving woman driven by her husband to lose her daughter and watch him suffer remorse too strong to describe. The truth lies in the pain that an oppressed people have endured for hundreds of years on both sides of the Atlantic. For that truth, Skin is worth experiencing.