Skillfully adapted from JM Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace is set in post-Apartheid South Africa.
John Malkovich, in one of his strongest roles in years, plays a professor of Romantic poetry – a cold, self-centred man, whose abusive affair with a student gets him sacked.
He takes refuge with his lesbian daughter ( Jessica Haines, in a stunning screen debut), who lives on a remote farm. What happens there forces them both to face things about themselves, and their fast-changing country, that shatter all their assumptions.
None of the characters are loveable, or even particularly admirable.
Not a comfortable watch, then – but still powerful and clear-eyed.
