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Variety.com - One of the more bizarre illustrations of racial injustice under apartheid is dramatized in “Skin.” First feature for Anthony Fabian tells the real-life story of Sandra Laing, born with black pigmentation and features to a white couple due to a genetic irregularity. Her rocky road makes for an involving tale presented with polished straightforwardness, acted with conviction by Sophie Okonedo as well as Sam Neill and Alice Krige as the well-intentioned but often misguided parents. Prospects are good for offshore sales to specialty distribs and broadcasters.
Framed by sequences set on South Africa’s first day of racially nonexclusive free elections in 1994, the otherwise chronological narrative starts in earnest three decades earlier. Ten-year-old Sandra (Ella Ramangwane) has been raised so far in rural isolation by her shopkeeper parents Abraham (Neill) and Sannie (Krige), with no real perception that she’s any different from them or from older brother Leon (Hannes Brummer).
But when she’s dropped off for the first time at boarding school, it’s immediately apparent that everyone else thinks she’s quite different indeed. “I’m not black!” she protests in all sincerity to a dormmate trying to demonstrate open-mindedness. Others, staff included, express their racial attitudes more cruelly.
At last expelled for fighting back against a viciously abusive teacher, Sandra is escorted home by police as if she were a public menace. Such treatment enrages Abraham, who fights for her reclassification as white all the way to the Supreme Court. There, a geneticist argues convincingly (if offensively to many) that, as a result of South Africa’s long colonialist history, most Afrikaners probably have some “colored” blood in them… [Full Story]
