C.H Newell This was a great and devastating film. Francois is a man who has repressed his sexuality; he is clearly in a near-loveless, or all the way loveless marriage, as he and his wife don't even seem to bump shoulders while in bed, their nightly discourse about some trivial daytime affairs. Francois some times goes to a house where he meets a bunch of other men around the same age; they drink, carry on a bit, and then they watch gay pornography while everyone engages in some form of sexual behaviour. Yet Francois makes comments about people who are "poofs", and "you never can tell with that type". He is one of many, many people in our world who is repressed beyond words. From the start, it appears he has some sort of fascination with Christian, who calls him Uncle Francois, but is not truly his nephew; we learn throughout that Francois and Christian's father served in the military together, and are old pals. However, Francois has more than an "Uncle"'s love regardless. Slowly, we watch his world dissolve around him until one brutal act suddenly changes everything for him.What I particularly liked was the slow pace because we gradually saw more and more of who Francois was behind the closet doors. There is a scene near the end where Francois dines alone at a restaurant (after taking out a large amount of cash from the bank, which will mean more to you once you've seen the film), and he notices two men who are talking, having a great time, laughing together; soon, they share a nice kiss. Francois is not disgusted in a repressed-type way. The dawning of a new understanding comes upon him; he realizes that is what he could have, he could find happiness if only he didn't bury his true nature deep within himself the way he does. He stares, and you can see Francois realizing that his life could have gone down a different path than where he finds himself; the savage act he perpetrated didn't have to happen. Of course, we know all this, but the realization comes to him near the end. We do not see the ramifications of what he has done, but instead simply there is the progression of Francois; where he started, and where he has ended up. We know what will come for him eventually, or do we? Will anyone ever find out what he has done? Perhaps we'll never know. I give this a 10 out of 10. Wonderful script. Brilliant, and fearless acting (there are some moments that are quite graphic without actually being full-frontal nudity). I can't recommend this enough. Certainly a tough watch at times, but worth it.

jm10701 Beauty is a generally well-made movie about the ugly consequences of sexual repression in an intensely, violently homophobic society in South Africa (although it could just as well have been set in the United States or most other countries). The movie's few serious flaws--Deon Lotz is not believable as a gay man, even as a severely closeted and homophobic gay man; and Charlie Keegan is nowhere near the beauty the movie makes him out to be--in a way aren't really flaws at all, because those incongruities reinforce the fundamental impossibility of anything approaching health and sanity in such a perverted society. The true perverts are the homophobes, and this movie exposes them and portrays the hypocrisy, depravity and violence of their lives with great power and clarity.The characters are bilingual; the movie's dialog is about 30% English and 70% Afrikaans, often switching back and forth several times within a single multi-person conversation. That would be okay if either both languages were subtitled (the best solution) or if the English were not spoken with a pronounced South African accent--but instead they chose to subtitle ONLY the words spoken in Afrikaans.Often I found myself wondering why the subtitles suddenly stopped in the middle of a conversation only to realize too late that they were speaking English now so I was supposed to know what they were saying; then they would switch without warning back to Afrikaans and the subtitles resumed.That's a big mistake, it would have been easy to avoid, and it's unacceptably and unnecessarily distracting. When the same voice alternates between Afrikaans and Afrikaans-accented English, a non-bilingual listener can't make the instantaneous adjustments required to understand every word. It would have cost them practically nothing to subtitle the English too, but they didn't. It became slightly less a problem later in the movie just because I got used to it, but it never ceased to be a distraction. That's the main reason I deducted a few stars.

Chris Chrolli It could have been a beautiful film. Production and acting are professional, and outdoors shots are clear, bright, colorful and vivid. The indoors scenes, except for the wedding reception at the beginning, however, are lifeless, dull and under-lit. The major shortcomings are the dialogs, which are drawn out and most of the time contribute little to the flow of the story, and excessive length of silence that does not foster any development of emotional or narrative progress. The script writer appears incompetent in that regard. Any good dramas would not let any valuable seconds go to waste. The orgy in the farm house is absolutely disgusting even to gays. And the fact that the main character can get away with impunity after committing rape serves to fuel even more misunderstanding by straights that gays have lower moral standards. I can't help wondering if the director is a homophobe. The only redeeming factor of this movie is Charlie Keegan playing the rape victim Christian, whose presence is totally engaging and lights up the screen in every scene. He is the reason I give this movie a rating of 4 rather than 1.

boxer111 I am unsure how to write this review without sounding like some failed writer or even some unhappy critic.I had not heard of this movie before, so seeing this would be a totally new experience for me and for sure...this was!I totally understood where the movie was coming from and what intentions they had for this movie, the premise was actually quite interesting in part - (straight!)Man fights his desire of gay feelings for some cute young guy, all gets too much for him and he loses control, attempts to rape him, feels guilty and well to be honest that's it.so many scenes left you hanging, the writers started something and never finished or parts were never fully explained, the long scenes of staring and silence, this movie could have been covered in about 40 minutes tops. This movie was long and painfully drawn out, some people here read into this differently and that is a shame as they built it up and in my and my friends minds it did not follow through, yes maybe some left to the imagination but much of it did not need to be told, some of the scenes could have been cut totally.Just my 2 cents!(pennies!!!)