Blazing saddles: fearless filmmaking
Almost two years since its overseas premiere, Flatland – Jenna Cato Bass’s third feature film – is finally coming to local cinemas. This unconventional feminist road movie plays out like a Western – set in the badlands of the Karoo. By Keith Bain
There’s this rollicking scene in Flatland when its two protagonists find themselves on a horse tearing down the highway in the middle of nowhere.
They’re on the run, and – forced by circumstance to turn their backs on smalltown life – hoping to reach the bright lights of Jo’burg.
Like the film itself, these women are on a wild ride through what might be the badlands of countless cowboy films.
Instead of the Wild West, though, we’re in the Karoo, and instead of John Wayne in the saddle, it’s Nicole Fortuin as a runaway bride, Natalie, and Izel Bezuidenhout as Poppie, her very pregnant bestie.
It’s an image that beautifully captures filmmaker Jenna Bass’s twisted take on the traditional Western.
And it’s a hint that, like these two young women, we’re in for one hell of a ride – one that’s more than a bit eccentric and heaps of fun to watch, too.
But are these two really in a Western, or is it a road movie? Maybe a chick flick? Could it perhaps be a detective thriller? Or possibly a revenge movie? Yes, it’s all of these things.
And there’s comedy too, plus a touch of romance and a hail of bullets, because that’s what you get in a Western – a big shootout at the end.
It all starts innocently enough, though. In Beaufort West, of all places.
Natalie – a total innocent with a mix of naïve expectation and pending tragedy in her eyes – marries a cop named Bakkies (played by De Klerk Oelofse). He seems decent enough, until they’re alone and he turns out to be a weasel.
The bridal bedroom becomes a scene of sexual violence, prompting a swift shift of gears. To escape the sudden nightmare, Natalie grabs the weasel’s gun and steals off into the night, taking her beloved horse, but leaving behind one dead body.
Natalie interrupts her aimless, unplanned getaway to pick up best friend Poppie – knocked up and full of mischief – and together they strike out, Thelma and Louise style, except of course for that horse.
While these young women are fleeing an insular community, it’s pretty apparent that they’re also attempting to unshackle themselves from the misogynistic status quo. Their flight of freedom makes for a tale that’s quite unlike any South African film you’ve seen before.
Flatland took a long time to get made. Bass started the screenplay back in 2009 and over the ensuing years it evolved into a very different story; its initial plot revolved around some sort of apartheid nuclear bomb conspiracy.
Bass says the film was born simply out of her desire to make a “proper” Western. The more she delved into the genre, though, the more sceptical she became.
“Because, if you look back at where Westerns come from, you realise that they’re colonial narratives typically about men going out and conquering the wilderness.”
So, while it takes its cue from Hollywood cowboys flicks, it blurs genres, lapsing between the horse opera it sets out to be, a crime thriller and a girls-gone-wild road movie – ultimately, it’s kind of unlike any South African film we’ve ever seen, revolutionary in the way it weaves together all sorts of unexpected twists into an entertaining romp that manages to tackle serious issues.
And there’s a whole lot in it that might rub your typical wild-west, cowboy-movie fan up the wrong way. Starting with all its main characters being women.
The film’s third female lead is a tenacious, sharp-shooting detective (played by Faith Baloyi) who has a fondness for velour tracksuits and soap operas. Detective Beauty Cuba is hot on the heels of Natalie and Poppie, but has a few skeletons in her own closet. Most notably, there’s her ex-lover (played by Brandon Daniels) whose release from a 15-year jail stint coincides with Natalie’s wedding night debacle.
And so, with these parallel story threads unfolding, Flatland turns into a thrilling feminist romp, not only subverting traditionally macho, testosterone-driven narratives, but also showing us female characters determined to act of their own volition.
The film is about its women, and it’s gratifying to see such multidimensional, wholly unconventional characters in a film that is full of quirk and intricacy.
It includes such a barrage of elements in fact, that it sometimes feels unlikely that all the pieces will eventually come together.
“Life is this really messy combination of tragedy and comedy and action and romance. Even the most ordinary domestic life has multiple shades and it frustrates me if I’m unable to capture all those emotional colours in a single film. It sometimes has the result that the film feels all over the place or gets pretty messy because it’s trying to do too much. But that’s really intentional for me. I can’t make them any other way.” Messy is the way Bass likes her films to be – filled with the chaos, confusion and disorderliness of life.
“For me, an interesting film is one that takes you on a whole quest, up and down the emotional spectrum,” she says.
“There’s this feeling afterwards of having gone through a rollercoaster ride. And that feeling is exactly what I wanted to achieve with this film.”
In other words, you’d better buckle up. Because the Flatland joyride is zany, unsanitised and anything but flat. DM168