Beauty

There seems to be a misapprehension about this movie and is key to understanding it. Francois is not in fact a blood uncle. In the opening wedding scene Christian says something ( I can't remember his actual words) which establish that. The opening scene shows Francois transfixed by a vision of a young man known to him last as a boy before the two families lost touch. If he were a REAL uncle, how likely is it that he doesn't already know what he looks like? This changes the whole dynamic of the movie and makes his actions at the later beach scene easier to understand. This movie is very good, but not an easy watch, but I feel that viewers need to know the above, (a point which even a few commercial reviewers got wrong) in order to appreciate its merits.

This film is without a doubt the most shocking film I have ever seen. It's difficult to say just how the writer/director came about doing this film but a couple of things come to mind. I could not help think of the way Hitchcock would prepare the viewer for a shocking scene by almost lulling the viewer to sleep so that when the big scene takes place you practically jump from your seat and go running for the nearest exit. I'm thinking of Psycho, of course. Here, a virtually identical event takes place and there was no exit for me to run to so I had to stay in my chair and sit out perhaps the most horrific scene I have ever witnessed in a movie or in real life. It is shockingly presented and you sit there frozen thinking to yourself this can't be happening. Everything that happens before the big scene and everything that happens after are completely out of context with the big scene itself and the writer/director has done this precisely the way Hitchcock did it in Psycho. There is an element of abstraction that really hits you hard and you just cannot stop thinking about what you have just seen. In fact, the more I think about this film the more I realize how torn and twisted men are when it comes to lust and the flesh and that the biggest struggle men have is overcoming their sexual desires especially when they are twisted and sick as in this fellow's case. It really is impossible for women to fully grasp just how horrific it is for men in many cases to overcome the flesh and to behave in a humane and decent way. Men are tortured there is no question about it and the man in this film is a perfect example of how wrong a man can go even though on the surface he lives a good life.

It's a slow burner but all the more satisfying for that. I like to get to the crux of a movie and here it is all about self denial. A closet homosexual who lives his life in complete denial of his sexual self. The scene where the men get together to indulge in an orgy but specify that no homosexuals are allowed makes the point without any preamble. The tension surrounds the main character's desire for a straight young man, you can feel his lust build and build and you know that is going to lead him to do something terrible and it does. The aftermath is very realistic, almost anti climatic but so many rape cases are not reported (especially male rape) that I felt it was wholly believable. I am not LGB or T but you don't have to be to get the message being portrayed here: suppression of your true self is a dangerous thing. One thing I discovered while looking into this movie was that there is a Queer Palm at Cannes, if it encourages more films like this it can only be a good thing.

Without imposing too much of a Marxist interpretation on this film it would be good to ponder on how much our actions are partly formed by the society in which we live. I was shocked to read one reviewer say Francois, the lead character is old, fat and ugly. Is this the sort of judgement we impose upon others created by the endless images of ' beautiful people ' around us ? Francois lives in a world that is repressed, ugly in its moral hypocrisy and full of racism and homophobia. He is trapped in this world, like most of us if we are honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we are trapped in the society we are born in. Some fight to get out, others stay. Many societies are ugly towards homosexuality and he lives in one of them, miserable in a loveless marriage and secretly yearning for the beauty of a fulfilled life he can no longer achieve. The last scene in the film was achingly accurate about this. After many years I have at last caught up with this film. Like other reviewers I saw how terrible the rape is, but I tried to understand the long fierce years of frustration and society's impositions that made it happen. Fritz Lang in ' Scarlet Street ' showed a similar unpunished crime. and Francois will have many long years ahead to live with this guilt. The monster in this film is the societies that breed the climate for such an action - the homosexual persecution and torture in Russia is just one example, and even within America and the UK everything is not ' beautiful ' and discrimination still exists. How many clothes shops for example where two beautiful people advertise the clothes are two men, or two women, clearly in love and together ? I have seen none. Beauty is for the so-called normal. To conclude I thought the film was expertly made and the time it took to relate the story was I believe for us to look closely at the world that surrounded this inwardly desperate man who has a lot of love within, but explodes and commits an atrocious act because he does not have any possibility in his society to express it. The horrifying sexual orgy of homosexual hating men at the beginning of the film was as equally painful to watch, caught like flies in the web of the world that society has made for them. One of the most thought provoking films I have seen recently, equal to the best of the great director Fritz Lang.

My goodness, one hour and forty minutes of watching paint dry. The amount of material in this film could have been disposed of in an hour or less.

It's just boring, boring, boring. And then we get to the "incident" referred to in the plot outline. Well, that such a severe and serious incident seemed to have no consequences at all was simply not on the cards.

I was fortunate in having a version that subtitled the English parts as well as the Afrikaans. If I'd had just the Afrikaans parts subtitled, as some have mentioned happened when they watched, I would have given up.

No one in this film was remotely sympathetic, not the main character and his dysfunctional family, not his friends or secret friends, not the "Beauty" of the title who wanted to take advantage without paying the price.

It's difficult to give details without turning this into spoilers, but the later events of the film could not conceivably have been engendered by repression and being closeted. It doesn't work on the psychological, social or cinematic level. And as for the ending, were we meant to be sympathetic? I wasn't.

Honestly, don't bother.