“An absorbing study of a man coming to terms with his emotional failings and a subtle portrait of post-Apartheid South Africa… a very faithful, hugely successful adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s Booker Prize winning novel.” — Film4.com
A very faithful and hugely successful adaptation... John Malkovich gives a superb performance in a powerful and intelligent study of a man coming back from the brink.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
Disgrace 2008
J.M. Coetzee's compelling Booker Prize-winning novel has been adapted with rare intelligence into a persuasive film. Readers may not have imagined John Malkovich as Coetzee's protagonist – a Cape Town Romantic poetry professor who loses his job after a reckless affair with a student – but he makes the role his own. His charismatic chill accentuates the dangerous gulf the character perceives between himself as a disempowered white and the restive post-Apartheid black community he encounters when he retreats to his daughter's farm. Coetzee never wastes a word, and the film matches his prose with a lean, tersely clipped style in which every powerfully framed image has a material impact. — BG
“Bravely and rightly eschewing narration, scripter Anna-Maria Monticelli and director Steve Jacobs (La spagnola) have distilled Coetzee's tough novel into a focused, absorbing meditation on race, class, history and sex.” — Eddie Cockrell, Variety