A Private Life

Based on the true story of Jack and Stella Dupont, who waged a 30-year fight against South African apartheid and its laws forbidding marriage across the colour bar. Gerard's film traces the couple's relationship from their first meeting, when policeman Jack wanders into the café where Stella (of mixed race background but untraced birth registration) works; after he leaves the force, the emphasis is on their efforts to maintain domestic harmony while contesting Stella's classification as coloured. The focus is almost exclusively on tension within the family rather than the broader context of confrontation, which produces an emotional force that is direct and uncluttered; but Jack's position as a solid, stable force is too literally conveyed, a fault due in part to the fact that Bill Flynn offers only modest support to Jana Cilliers' sensitive performance. Worthy and at times moving, but with a soppy and intrusive score.