Movie Review: Skin

The extended clan gather in <i>Skin</i>. Photo / Supplied

"Stranger than fiction" may be an overused phrase, but it certainly fits the true story behind Skin. In 1950s apartheid-era South Africa, a white couple produce a child who's clearly coloured, a genetic-throwback. Black blood was running in the veins of the Laings; they just didn't know it until now.

Ella Ramangwane plays the child Sandra, whose home in an isolated rural outpost shields her from stares and Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo is commanding as the adult Sandra. Our own Sam Neill is good, too, as protective, but bigoted father Abraham, who'll stop at nothing to reclassify his daughter as white.

Trouble is, whatever her classification, Sandra doesn't fit anywhere. She's an oddity to blacks and an eyesore to whites. Shopkeepers don't want her dirtying their stores, classmates don't want her sharing their dorm, and her father wants her to stay in her room. Unsurprisingly, she rebels.

You'd think this pearler of a story would carry the film and, in part, it does. But everything is so literal, like ticking off dates on a timeline. And while Sandra's childhood deserves plenty of attention, we're told little about how she navigated an alcoholic husband and destitute adulthood. Basically, Skin feels like a telemovie, albeit an important one.

* Rated M; 107 minutes. Out now.