Following the disappointment of his sophomore feature 'Manodrome,' South African director John Trengove returns home and regains form with this subtly vivid adaptation of Mark Behr's 1993 novel.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Portobello Productions Every surface period detail is present and correct to an eerie degree in “The Smell of Apples“: the gawkily short seasonal school uniforms, the ickily patterned kitchen tiles, the garden chairs like steel satellite dishes, the orange-and-brown daisy print that anyone of a certain age will recognize from sundry towels, mattresses and beach umbrellas. Production designer Birrie Le Roux has crafted a pristine one-way time capsule to mid-1970s white South Africa; DP Lennert Hillege shoots it to softly lit, summer-burnt perfection. But there’s not a whisper of nostalgia to “The Smell of Apples,” director John Trengove‘s slowly, then suddenly, piercing evocation of affluent Afrikaner family life in that era, and the litany of egregious abuses and inequalities propping it up. It’s told through the eyes of a naïve 11-year-old boy, but there’s no halo to his innocence — just a growing awareness of how much he doesn’t know, none of it good.
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