New releases to watch at home

Moffie

Dir: Oliver Hermanus (1hr 44mins) (18)

★★★★

Set in South Africa in the early 1980s, Moffie is a “brutal and brilliant” drama about the young white men who were conscripted into the army to defend the apartheid regime, said Simran Hans in The Guardian. The film follows a “quiet, closeted” 18-year-old named Nicholas (Kai Luke Brummer) as he travels from his home to an army boot camp, to undergo a process of dehumanisation before being sent to fight in the Border War. There is something of a love story in all this, as Nicholas finds himself drawn to a rebellious fellow recruit (Ryan de Villiers). But writer-director Oliver Hermanus treats this as the “subtext”, so that he can focus our attention on the “visceral sadism” of the army, and “the emotional and physical toll” of living under a “toxic regime”.

“Moffie” is a homophobic slur – Afrikaans for “faggot”. For Nicholas, who has only a fledgling awareness of his sexuality, it will carry “particular venom”, said Danny Leigh in the FT. “But the film is patient.” First we must see the sensitive teen en route to camp with his fellow conscripts, in a carriage “brimming” with excess testosterone. “You may wish Hermanus wasn’t quite so good at pinning you in place beside him – but he is, his film-making spare, clear-eyed, horribly evocative.” There are moments when the film becomes difficult to watch, said Kevin Maher in The Times, but it’s “incredibly nuanced”. We see a vile act of racism, but Hermanus also teases out “the contradictions within white society, especially the fracture between the South Africans of English origin and Afrikaners”. Nicholas is a “moffie” and a “pom”, making him “doubly damned”. Available on Curzon Home Cinema.