Yesterday Movie Review

Cast: Leleti Khumalo, Kenneth Khambula, Harriet Lenabe, Lihle Mvelase, Camilla Walker
Director: Darrell James Roodt
Screenplay: Darrell James Roodt
Genre: Drama
Rated: MA 15+ mature themes, medium level violence
Running Time: 94 Minutes

Nominated Best Foreign Film 2005 Academy Awards

Synopsis:
Yesterday lives in Rooihoek, a remote village in South Africa's Zululand. Her everyday life is not easy but she takes great joy in her seven-year-old daughter, Beauty. The unsteadiness of Yesterday's life is thrown when she is diagnosed with AIDS and must journey afar to understand and confront her illness. Yesterday's key driving force is Beauty, who is a year away from starting school and so Yesterday sets herself the goal of living long enough to see Beauty start school.

My Verdict:
Set against the backdrop of some beautiful but isolated South African Zululand, 'Yesterday' is the story of a woman called Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo), so named by her father as he said that yesterday was always better than today. Yesterday lives a simple existence with her seven-year-old daughter Beauty (Lihle Mvelase) and her errant husband working underground in mines in Johannesburg. Yesterday rarely sees her husband and so she is basically left to fend for herself and Beauty in a village where there is no electricity, water is obtained after walking to the local well each day and where westernised medical aid is unobtainable.

Yesterday becomes ill and seeks help at a neighbouring village, walking with Beauty for over two hours to get there, but being too late is sent away to return the following week. This happens again until eventually Yesterday is seen by the doctor who in due course diagnoses HIV and urges Yesterday to find her husband as it is likely that he too has the virus. Yesterday is determined to stay alive until Beauty's first day of school the following year and then nurses her husband through his illness after he reluctantly returns home.

'Yesterday' is a moving and emotional journey as Yesterday deals with her diagnosis, her daughter's future and her husband's illness. After her diagnosis is revealed, Yesterday receives little support from the tight-knit village where she lives, once she was part of the community but now she is ostracised, her only friend being a teacher she befriended on the road to the neighbouring village.

Never sinking into sentimentality or becoming a tool to preach regarding HIV issues, 'Yesterday' is simplistic but also brutally honest. Yesterday's love and devotion for her child is paramount as is her loyalty to her husband and it is these virtues that are central to the movie, combined with the visually dramatic and often harsh landscape. It is hard not to feel touched by Yesterday's story as she strives to deal with her life and it is a reality check that human emotions know no boundaries.

Rating : ***½

Christina Bruce