Blecher Rides Waves, Inelegantly
Cutting her teeth with the surfing 2010 short doc Surfing Soweto, director Sara Blecher has forged ahead, tackling similar territory with her fictional wave bound feature debut, Otelo Burning. Often feeling a bit puerile, films that fixate on surfing tend to use the sport as an over arching symbol of freedom and escape, and Blecher’s film is no different. A quartet of friends face a myriad of adolescent problems, only to find that surfing could be their ticket away from their issues to fame and fortune atop a gloriously blue break. It does however successfully employ the played out athletics to explore racial tensions and political unrest that plagued South Africa before the end of apartheid during the 90s with surprisingly grim inflection of tonal balance.
Blecher sets the familiar pieces in play with our dark skinned leading teens, Otelo (Jafta Mamabolo) and his little brother...
Cutting her teeth with the surfing 2010 short doc Surfing Soweto, director Sara Blecher has forged ahead, tackling similar territory with her fictional wave bound feature debut, Otelo Burning. Often feeling a bit puerile, films that fixate on surfing tend to use the sport as an over arching symbol of freedom and escape, and Blecher’s film is no different. A quartet of friends face a myriad of adolescent problems, only to find that surfing could be their ticket away from their issues to fame and fortune atop a gloriously blue break. It does however successfully employ the played out athletics to explore racial tensions and political unrest that plagued South Africa before the end of apartheid during the 90s with surprisingly grim inflection of tonal balance.
Blecher sets the familiar pieces in play with our dark skinned leading teens, Otelo (Jafta Mamabolo) and his little brother...
- 11/22/2012
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
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