BEAUTY

Imagine you enter a dark room, you are hugged, then pushed and finally left alone surrounded by an eerie silence. Experience Oliver Hermanus’ film and you will feel a similar sense of stunned disorientation as you travel intimately with a man ravaged by the destructive power of self-denial. Francois (Deon Lotz) is a middle-aged, secretly homosexual, Afrikaans man living in Bloemfontein whose miserable but stable existence is challenged by his desire for a beautiful 23-year-old man. The film effortlessly moves between the grind of his life and intensely raw sexual scenes, while we as the audience struggle with the push and pull between empathy for the tortured man and hatred when his misplaced lust pushes him beyond his moral confines. Warning: Not for the faint hearted.***1/2

Written by Nerida Lindsay