Our next film takes place on:
Tuesday 4th December
Little Theatre
7.45pm

Tsotsi

John Hood/S Africa/2005/94 minutes

Preceded by a short.

A hardened criminal on the streets of a Johannesburg shanty town suddenly finds himself caring for a baby in this edgy and powerful drama from South Africa

A crime story with a serious difference, Tsotsi is an energetic mix of character study and thriller that catapults its audience straight into an unfamiliar but vividly realised society. A tale of forgiveness and redemption with a vice-like grip, it explores a dark and violent world where innocence is easily destroyed.

The story revolves around a brutal, near-silent hoodlum (Chweneyagae) who initially is known only as 'Tsotsi' - a South African word meaning 'thug'. Living in a shantytown on the edge of Johannesburg, he regularly leads a gang of criminally-minded misfits in bouts of violence, but will happily turn on his friends given the slightest provocation. With a past he'd rather forget, Tsotsi has almost blanked out his own humanity and doesn't show a moment's pity - until the night when an impromptu opportunity for a car theft presents itself. On the verge of desperation, Tsotsi shoots the female owner of the car and speeds away, only to discover he's also accidentally stolen the three-month-old baby on the car's back seat.

About to abandon the car with the baby inside, Tsotsi suddenly (and initially without explanation) changes his mind, instead taking the baby home with him to the shanty town and hesitantly trying to take care of it. Gradually, memories of his damaged childhood start coming back to him, while he keeps the baby secret from his gang and forces a local mother named Miriam (Pheto) to breastfeed the baby at gunpoint. What he can't avoid, however, is the fact that the police are getting closer in their hunt for the baby, and soon the question becomes can he face the consequences of what he's done.

Performed by a cast largely made up of South African stage actors and with most of the dialogue in Tsotsi-Taal (a language that mixes English, Afrikaans and several tribal dialects), it's a compulsively told story that shares some stylistic similarities with City Of God , but also forges its own unique path. Above everything else, it's a fierce depiction of a class-stricken world where the potential for violence lurks around every corner, illustrated perfectly by the early sequence on a packed train where Tsotsi's gang robs and stabs a passenger without anyone around them realising.

This ever-present violence drives the film, giving it a gritty edge, but the real core of the drama is in the characterisation, and particularly the relationship between Tsotsi and Miriam. Starting as a tense kidnapper-victim equation, it slowly evolves into something more, as Miriam recognises the turmoil going on inside Tsotsi's head and hesitantly tries to help him. It's highly impressive that the director manages to pull this off without sinking into sentimentality, and the performances are perfectly pitched, especially from Chweneyagae who has the tricky job of convincingly turning from a brutal blank slate into a damaged young man.

Tension bubbles away until the climax, where all the plot threads come together in a satisfying manner, and there's no sense of lecturing or inappropriate agendas in the storytelling. Instead, this is a universal and powerful story that's shot in vivid widescreen, and carries a restless sense of energy thanks to the sharp visuals and a pulsating soundtrack of ethnic 'Kwailto' music.

Verdict
There may be moments of shocking brutality, but this crime drama is also a compelling, well-made and surprisingly touching slice of cinema.

Channel4

Trivia

Director Gavin Hood and Casting Director Moonyeen Lee were originally planning to cast an actor in his late twenties or early thirties as Tsotsi, but eventually decided that it would make him difficult to empathise with. It was Lee who suggested going much younger, as "the audience would be more willing to forgive a boy who was on the verge of becoming a man than they would someone older."

Please visit http://www.chesterfilmfans.co.uk/mailing_list/news_071202.htm for an online version of this issue.