Movie Review: Skin

Skin
(M), 107 minutes
3.5/5
Beauty is more than skin deep, so the saying goes. But in apartheid South Africa skin was everything. More exactly, the colour of it was everything.
Skin (the movie), based on the true story of Sandra Laing, is a stunning look at the brutal reality of life under apartheid.
From 1948 to 1994, your rights as a South African were dependent on the colour of your skin.
If it was white, you had all the rights in the world. If you were coloured, your rights were limited. If you were black, you had few rights.
Coming from the world we live in, it is hard to believe such a system ever existed.
Sandra Laing (Sophie Okonedo) grew up in apartheid South Africa but she was unusual.
While her parents, Sannie and Abraham (Alice Krige and Sam Neill), and older brother were white, a genetic abnormality saw Sandra born with brown skin.
While her family treated her as a white person, society saw Sandra as different. When she went to boarding school, she was soon sent home after protests from white parents.
She was reclassified as coloured, so Abraham took his fight over Sandra's colour to the highest court knowing what life lay ahead of her should she remain coloured.
He won his fight but Sandra didn't see herself as a winner. The reality was that she was caught between two worlds - she felt black as well as white.
When Sandra fell into the arms of a black man, she was banished from the family home forever.
While Abraham may have been fighting for his daughter, he was also fighting for his own peace of mind.
As a white South African, he was a true Afrikaner and treated blacks as little better than slaves.
The prospect of having a daughter with black skin was abhorrent to him as was the prospect of her having a black partner or black children.
He was a man full of hatred and anger. Sandra's mother, however, was first and foremost a mother and loved her daughter without question.
Sandra's banishment simply tore her apart.
Skin takes us through Sandra's life and the many hardships she endured. Throughout it all, she was never prepared to give up and accept her lot in life.
Sandra's story certainly fits in the thought-provoking category. If it wasn't all true, you wouldn't believe what you were seeing and you wouldn't believe people were ever treated this way.
But the apartheid that ruled Sandra's life was very real.
If you like some depth in your viewing, pull up a seat and watch a gripping story.