Finally a teaser for the film “Skoonheid,” by Cape Town director, Oliver Hermanus, is now online. Billed as the first Afrikaans film to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, the film also finally screened earlier today at Cannes. That means the first mainstream reviews are in. They’re mixed.

Here are some excerpts from the reviews as well as links:

Jordan Mintzer in Hollywood Reporter:

A closeted homosexual has the hots for his brawny nephew in Skoonheid, a plodding South African drama that feels like a short film stretched into a feature, and fails to find its rhythm despite a decent lead turn from Deon Lotz. Basically a one-idea, one-plot-point movie that tries to provide grandeur via ineffective widescreen cinematography, writer-director Oliver Hermanus’ slim exploration of repressed desire and sexual angst will be of most interest to LGBT fests and distribs … though Lotz has a strong screen presence, it’s not enough to make Skoonheid the parable on stilted South African machismo that it was surely meant to be.

Lee Marshall in Screen Daily:

The film’s dramatic tension lies not in the explicit content of many of the scenes but in the set of the protagonist’s mouth and his alert, needy but downcast eyes; or in little details in the corner of the scene, often out of focus – a mixed-race couple on the beach, a happy gay couple flirting in a gay bar where Francois sits drinking, filled with self-hatred – or the archive newspaper cutting on the wall of a restaurant that reads FREE AT LAST. It’s still a testing ride for the audience, and Hermanus doesn’t quite know how to end the film; but his is a refreshing new voice in a territory known up to now more for its township dramas, at least on the international festival stage.

Melissa Anderson at Artforum’s blog

An overcooked, protracted tale of a married, self-loathing, dangerous top, the twenty-seven-year-old South African director’s sophomore film is vying for the second “Queer Palm” (the inaugural award went to Gregg Araki’s Kaboom last year) …

The Belgian film critic, Patrick Duynslaegher:

What makes this portrait of a seemingly happily married but tormented gay man original is the fact that the tensions of his double life are deeply rooted in the reality and the mentality of contemporary post-apartheid South Africa, thus linking his self-loathing to the conservative and racist ideology of (the) country.

Further Reading

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.