As the film opens 12-year-old Chandra is seen sitting
quietly waiting in an office. She is
asked if she is expecting Jonah her stepfather to show, but he evidently is drunk
and out with a whore. Lillian her mother
is at home immobilized by grief and illness, and as there is no other adult
around, then Chandra has to go ahead and select the coffin for her baby sister
who has just died. It is no task at all for a young girl, but it sets the scene
for what this remarkable child has to face up and deal with.
Suspicion in the neighborhood of this Johannesburg
suburb is that her family has been struck by AIDS even though everyone is in
such morbid fear of the disease that it is taboo to even mention it, let alone
acknowledge it's existence. As Lillian gets sicker. Mrs.
Tafa a bossy wealthy neighbor insists in getting a witchcraft seer to cast the
demons out. When she states that the
only way is for Lillian to go back to her home village to be cured, it's a
coded way of telling her to die away from the town so as not to bring disgrace
to the family.
Jonah has been absent for some months but when he is dragged
back home it is clear that he is not just drunk this time but very sick indeed. No one will help him and they leave him just
lying in the road, presumably to die.
Chandra’s best friend Esther is considered a bad
influence on her, but it turns out that because both her parents had died (of
AIDS) and she was left fending for herself, the 12 year old had started offering
sexual favors at the truck stop just to survive. And this is how she eventually gets raped by
an HIV+ man and is then thrown into a roadside ditch to die. The Police who
discovered her wont help, and nor will the Hospital Doctors. But Chandra does, especially as now she has
worked out that her own mother has been infected too.
She’s a very determined 12 year old who already has
the responsibility of caring for her younger brother and sister, but she
decides to leave them with Mrs. Tafa so that she can go to bring her mother back home to die. Her grandmother and Aunt
have already turned Lillian out of their house to avoid her bringing shame to
them, and so the poor woman is now living rough in a field.
When the ambulance brings a very sick Lillian back
home the neighbors start a near riot fearing that her presence will infect all
of them. Its Mrs. Tafa who had been so
hard on Chandra all along as she has her own hidden demons, who comes to
Chandra's aid, and by doing so gives this extremely harrowing story an
improbable upbeat ending.
The poisoned climate of rumor and gossip is not surprising
in a country where the former President did so much harm which resulted in many unnecessary
deaths by his rigid denial of the causes and treatment of AIDS for years. What
was surprising however was Chandra’s unflinching support and love for both her
mother and best friend. She occasionally showed anger, but never shed a single
tear. It was the way that she took on
life with such fierce determination that made this story remarkable to watch
and so totally compelling.
I simply cannot imagine how the German filmmaker
Oliver Schmitz came to be so lucky to find such extraordinary raw talent to play
Chandra and Esther. These untrained
girls making their acting debuts were totally mesmerizing with their penetrating wide-open
eyes. And full credit to the adult
actors who gave beautifully understated performances as Lillian and Mrs. Tafa.
When I used to help Program a Festival which always
seemed to have never ending submissions of movies dealing with AIDS …. most of
which were annoyingly bad …..my thought was always if you are going to upset a
large part of your audience who may had some personal experience of the
epidemic, then the movie should at least be good, and preferably have something
new/relevant to say. This movie would
easily pass that criteria and is important enough to risk shedding the tears
that Chandra never could on the screen.
This 12 year’s old straightforward approach to dealing
with impending death is beautiful summed up by the (perfect) title of this
movie. Life, above all. Unmissable.
★★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★★
