Cleverly roundabout (and upstream) approach to the apartheid problem in South Africa, with a deceptively sunny, pastel image. It starts out from the strict point of view of a thirteen-year-old white girl who doesn't know why her father has had to leave the country, or exactly what her leftist mother (modelled on journalist Ruth First) gets up to, or ultimately what she gets arrested for. (Under the new Ninety Day Detention Act, the authorities don't have to say.) This is a big load for a young girl, and screen newcomer Jodhi May has just the right posture for it: a giraffe-sloped ifnot -lengthed neck, a pair of sagging shoulders. Her performance is pretty affecting, especially at its emotional peaks (striding top-speed across the street to yell at the police surveillance team), but she's helped in this by being at an age that automatically plays on our sympathies. After the mother's arrest, the point of view shifts occasionally into areas inaccessible to our adolescent heroine, and the approach to the politics of the matter becomes more blunt. Chris Menges, the cinematographer-turned-director, maintains a good casual camera eye all throughout. With Barbara Hershey. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
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