After having an impulsive affair with a student, a twice-divorced literature professor moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.
Steve Jacobs' adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace fearlessly pares back the layers of post-Apartheid South Africa within the microcosm of a father/daughter relationship.
The movie eventually begins to wilt under the sober, plodding direction of Steve Jacobs, but the thoughtful screenplay gives Malkovich a complex, increasingly reflective character arc that he plays with great feeling.
I awaited the closing scenes of Disgrace with a special urgency, because the story had gripped me deeply but left me with no idea how it would end. None -- and I really cared.
Unfortunately, though Malkovich remains a compelling and cerebral screen presence, he comes off as too innately detached and prickly to elicit much empathy (not that his character is asking for it, mind you).
If you know the novel, you're likely to feel that something has been lost here; if you don't, you still have the film's monotonous pacing to contend with. Still, Jacobs has directed an intelligent, intriguing drama.
It's an enormously complicated story with great potential for reductive schmaltz, but this is avoided thanks to Anna Maria Monticelli's sharp, sensitive screenplay and superb performances.
