The Wound

An impos­ing under­cur­rent of por­tent, of grand reper­cus­sions stem­ming from qui­et begin­nings, is appar­ent from the off in John Trengove’s del­i­cate film about youth and sex­u­al­i­ty. As Xolani, Nakhane Touré plays a care­giv­er for the young men attend­ing a South African ini­ti­a­tion who is forced to keep his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion under wraps.

No-frills cam­er­a­work and sparse, ambi­ent sound design add to the air of insu­lar­i­ty endured by Xolani. Forced to hide from the con­ser­vatism of his peers, his assig­na­tions with Bongile Mantsai’s Vija seem a well-kept secret until the arrival of Niza Jay Ncoyini’s city-boy Kwan­da. See­ing through their act, Kwan­da comes under Xolani’s care as he sets upon the path to man­hood, all the while pos­ing a threat to the secu­ri­ty of all three men.
With­in this unas­sum­ing tech­ni­cal frame­work it falls upon the actors to car­ry the film.

Thank­ful­ly, all excel in their approach to por­tray­ing the dis­parate atti­tudes of these three embat­tled indi­vid­u­als. Touré in par­tic­u­lar offers a beau­ti­ful­ly under­stat­ed per­for­mance that, from the first tor­tured look slipped past Kwanda’s father when he recog­nis­es him­self in the sto­ries of the man’s repressed son, reveals all he has been pres­sured to with­hold. Mantsai’s por­tray­al of a man at war with his own sex­u­al­i­ty per­fect­ly explores the need to mask the truth with clas­si­cal ​‘butch’ mas­culin­i­ty, as well as the cor­re­la­tions between sex, pow­er and control.

That said, one major mis­step occurs in its final moments. An unchar­ac­ter­is­tic show of aggres­sion comes close to under­min­ing the sub­tle­ty of all that came before. It’s a shame giv­en the nuance on show else­where, though the insights demon­strat­ed through­out eas­i­ly pro­vide enough rea­son to over­look this mis­judged ending.