Violence, sex themes, mature themes and coarse language
Australia/South Africa 2008
Genre: Drama
Director: Steve Jacobs
Screenplay: Anna Maria Monticelli
Featuring: John Malkovich, Paula Arundell, Scott Cooper, Eriq Ebouaney, Jessica
Haines, Fiona Press, Monroe Reimers and Charles Tertiens
Language: English
Running time: 119 mins
David Lurie, a professor who teaches poetry at a university in Cape Town, is not a very likeable man. He is divorced, lives alone and is apparently friendless; even Soraya, the prostitute he visits, is disenchanted with him. His air of bored aloofness doesn’t endear him to his colleagues, so there is no mercy for him when he’s disgraced by the revelation that he seduced one of his students, Melanie, and then forged a pass mark for a test she didn’t take – he’s forced to resign his position but, as he tells a student journalist, he finds the experience ‘enriching’.
He goes to visit his lesbian daughter, Lucy on her remote farm, but while he is there an incident occurs that changes his life forever.
J.M. Coetzee’s powerful Booker Prize-winning novel was never going to be easy to adapt to the screen and it’s to the credit of Anna-Maria Monticelli that her screenplay is both faithful and cinematic.
It would have been easy to rely on a voice-over narration, but Monticelli and Jacobs reject this, and the result is a strange, disturbing and ultimately riveting film whose final shot is quite memorable – Steve Arnold’s camera work is exemplary throughout.
Jessica Haines as the daughter gives a magnificent performance and isn’t over-shadowed by her formidable co-star. This is a most unusual Australian film, but a very powerful one.
Source: David Stratton – At the Movies.
Compiled by Peter Gillard