Skin

Skin is a movie set in South Africa in the heart of the Apartheid era. It is the true story of Sandra Laing, a girl born to white Afrikaner parents, whose life is made a living hell because of her dark complexion and curly hair. One of the legal pillars that propped up the Apartheid regime was the Population Registration Act, under which every person in South Africa was classified by race, as white, black, coloured, Indian and so forth. Under the Act persons could be reclassified from one group to the other. Pieter Dirk-Uys, is a well-loved South African satirist who used to mercilessly lampoon the Apartheid regime. Part of his act would be to simply read from the Government Gazette where recent race reclassifications were minuted. It would immediately expose how ridiculous the Law was and cause us to shake our heads in disbelief.

It may be hard for an international audience to appreciate the gravity of the situation in which Sandra Laing found herself. How can we expect people on the outside to understand that under Apartheid being reclassified from white to coloured was as unthinkable as being reclassified as something not quite human, and to which the normal rules of human decency would no longer apply.

Moreover, from the perspective of a free South Africa, Sandra's plight may now seem less serious. In the new South Africa no one cares whether you are white or black. Can we still imagine what it was like in those dark days?

This is what Skin asks its audience to do and, on the whole, it is successful. It is well made and there is no part of it that does not ring true. It boasts a very capable international cast, the English, Sophie Okonedo as Sandra, New Zealand's Sam Neil and South Africa's own, Alice Krige and Tony Kgoroge. It's a tale with a reasonably happy ending, if not so much for Sandra, for whom the changes came a bit too late, then at least for all the other Sandras who came after her and those yet to be born.