100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
This great film by Anthony Fabian tells this story through the eyes of a happy girl who grows into an outsider.
Skin
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- United Kingdom,
- South Africa
- 2009
- · 107m
Director
Anthony Fabian
Cast
Sophie Okonedo,
Alice Krige,
Sam Neill,
Terri Ann Eckstein,
Bongani Masondo,
Dan Robbertse
Genre
Drama
Skin is based on the true story of Sandra Laing, a South African woman born during Apartheid. Sandra, despite being born to two white parents, appears to be mixed-race, and is classified as "colored" by the South African government. This biographical drama follows her as she struggles with her identity and faces racism in a deeply segregated society.
Stream Skin
What are critics saying?
83
Entertainment Weekly
A tragic, enraging, and uplifting tale.
83
Entertainment Weekly by Clark Collis
A tragic, enraging, and uplifting tale.
75
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
Inherently dramatic but needed a stronger director than Anthony Fabian, who overdoes understatement.
75
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
If you didn't know that it was based on a true story, Skin would be a little hard to believe.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Walter Addiego
Director Anthony Fabian lets the story sell itself, and it does so partly on the strength of the lead performance by Sophie Okonedo.
70
Village Voice
This workmanlike, but enormously moving, movie makes the case that apartheid really does control her life, even her decision to rebel and get involved with a black man.
70
Variety by Dennis Harvey
One of the more bizarre illustrations of racial injustice under apartheid is dramatized in Skin.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
The fact that it's actually based on a true story adds an extra layer of poignancy, heightened further by another superb Sophie Okonedo performance.
70
Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall
Ella Ramangwane gives a fine performance as the young Sandra.
70
Village Voice by Ella Taylor
This workmanlike, but enormously moving, movie makes the case that apartheid really does control her life, even her decision to rebel and get involved with a black man.
63
Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey
Skin is both exasperatingly choppy and exceptionally moving.
60
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
A little more variation in the script, though, might have yielded something truly great.
50
New York Post by V.A. Musetto
The direction is never more than conventional, with a tear-inducing finale better suited to a TV soap opera.
50
Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey
Too many of the characters are either good or bad, and that loss of nuance is missed.
50
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Alas, Mr. Fabian, directing his first feature-length fiction film, uses a club whenever a feather would do. He also mishandles the actors, in particular Mr. Neill and Ms. Okonedo, both of whom have been incomparably better elsewhere.
40
Time Out
The story is too rich in incident for Fabian, whose episodic TV-movie approach speeds through Laing’s lifetime of abuse.
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