Publications
Partners
What it's about:
Simon Dawson (Tyrel Meyer), a white, Jewish South African who has just returned home from working in the UK, meets Xhosa Jackie Msolisi (Astara Mwakalumbwa) and it's love at first sight. When the two decide to get married, their respective families butt heads as their conservative views on interracial relationships and the state of the nation threaten to derail wedding plans.
What we thought:
Believe me, I did not set out to dislike this film, even when a contrived title like I Now Pronounce You Black and White sets off a multitude of red warning lights. It's no fun at all to watch a South African production fail – creatively or commercially – but it's definitely worse to forgive a poor film its failings because it's homegrown.
Where to start? There's just so much going wrong here, and the major problems do not, incidentally, lie with the premise. Anyone who is shocked or annoyed by the fact that love across the 'racial lines' is still an issue worth addressing in a movie (it's just so pre-1994, you might think) has a pretty blighted view of what really happens when a mixed race couple walk down a crowded street in just about any major city in South Africa. Hands up: who tries extra hard not to do a double take? The recent release of the The Race-ist should give you some indication of where the local industry's mindset is at.
So while the material and ripe context is there, buzzing with potential, the sad fact is that British-born, SA-resident writer-director Oliver Rodger seems to have lost sight of what he actually wanted to achieve with his film: to take a wryly amusing look at what South Africans really think of one another once the politically correct filters have been removed. It's mildly amusing for about the first 10 minutes of the movie, when Simon's uptight Jewish mother can only bring herself to refer to her prospective daughter-in-law as "that girl" and his Afrikaner father (a misused Ian Roberts) can barely contain his anger at his son's betrayal by unleashing wave after wave of vitriol at their stereotypically lazy black housekeeper. "You can take the maid out of Gugulethu…" opines Mrs Dawson, a bit too convincingly.
In the townships, Jackie is also having a hard time convincing her parents to accept her plans. Her mother is loud and obnoxious and exceptionally Christian, her father is an overweight buffoon who only cares about his next meal and the welfare of his beloved tjorrie. If these characters do not at first appear to be distasteful caricatures, then avert your eyes and cover your ears as the two sets of parents mercilessly attack each other over their first dinner meeting, and later at the wedding itself. This is a movie that switches gears from derisive observational comedy to outright malice in no time at all. I'm all for picking on our unique cultural idiosyncrasies to get us to laugh at ourselves, heaven knows it's the foundation upon which this country's comedy legacy has been built, but something has gone terribly wrong when the insults become personal and a black woman's personal hygiene, or rather the supposed lack thereof, is something to mock. This isn't entertainment. This is demeaning.
But even before that low arrives, Rodgers gets some very elementary things wrong. There's no motivation for us to cheer Simon and Jackie along their rocky walk down the aisle. We only get to see their courtship progress over the short credit sequence, so any chemistry they're meant to have does not even factor into it. As a couple, they're without charm or passion. As individuals, they're an utter bore. But no-one is as white bread dull as David, Simon's best man from the UK. He's set up as the outsider, uninitiated in the bigoted ways of South Africans, and with whom lies the burden of making everyone see eye to eye – or at least cutting through the crap and getting our couple hitched. What he does seem to do with some degree of success is walk and talk. Everything else is an exercise in seeing how many times you will mouth "WTF?!" at the screen. The movie is ostensibly set in Cape Town, but there is not a single shot of flora or fauna, or even something resembling a landmark, to establish this. The wise-cracking coloured characters are probably there to fill that void.
It's also disappointing how thoroughly unsexy this movie is. The abundance of hot, young people caught in a mad situation sounds like the perfect playground for all kinds of pent-up frustration, sexual and otherwise, to play itself out in a few wacky set pieces, even suggestively. Screw it, let's do it right? Wrong. Jackie tells David that his primary job as best man, as per tradition, is to get it on with her sexy bridesmaid – but the suggestion is a cruel one. David has all the sexual impulse of Mr. Bean eating a slice of toast.
The only bits that could conceivably be viewed as funny is the silly posturing between the Dawson's rabbi and the Msolisi's pastor. And Nik Rabinowitz gets a humorous cameo as a white sangoma-in-training who's just a 'kiff' Cape Town surfer oke when he clocks out at the end of the day. More off-the-cuff moments like this could have saved I Now Pronounce You Black and White. Unfortunately, the movie serves as a cautionary tale for other up-and-coming filmmakers, and while it doesn't have the clout to re-ignite any sort of racial hostility, it's sure to steer the debate in the wrong direction. For a supposed comedy, it's just far too cynical.
Comedy is a more powerful tool than this movie can even comprehend. I sincerely hope some lessons will be learned from this experience.
