The Wound (2017)
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The Wound Movie Review
The Wound is a 2017 South African drama film directed by John Trengove. It is a somewhat flawed, yet very good and authentic drama.
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“My friend. You will never change“
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The film follows the forbidden relationship of two gay men during the Xhosa initiation ritual in South Africa. The movie is thus very interesting in its subject matter and setting as it explores underrepresented people and their culture while still dealing with an LGBT subject matter. Both are really well done.
It was a great choice to showcase a homosexual relationship in this particular culture and tribe which is very macho-oriented and traditional and thus their troubles are much bigger and more dangerous than they are for other gay men.
I definitely had a problem with that overly dark ending and the movie certainly is very depressing and unhappy, but I also liked that as it led to a different, more original story than what you would usually get, especially in American cinema. The film shows us a more realistic, darker outcome and although I did not want that, it was still necessary for them to portray such an outcome.
The major problem with The Wound lies in its character development which is particularly weak for a drama film. Other than that, the film is very strong, but because the characters are quite weak for the most part, they tend to drag the film down for me quite a bit. The acting is very strong and their interactions and relationships are either moving or realistic, but I wanted more personalized, more complex entities which I just did not get here.
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The Wound features some very memorable sequences and a couple of highly moving and tragic scenes. The emotional investment is strong here and despite weaker characterization, I cared and rooted for the main characters a lot. The film portrays forbidden love and broken lives so well and how dangerous and tragic it is to be different in an extremely traditional society. The direction from John Trongove is very good and although the film is not too cinematic, it is well shot and particularly well scripted with excellent and grounded in reality dialogue.
The character development is weaker in The Wound plus the ending is overly dark for me, but I still respected the film for going in a different than usual, unhappy and tragic direction and that made its story more original and effective. The film features very strong dialogue, good direction and it deals with an interesting subject matter as well as underrepresented people and their rituals.
