David Lurie (John Malkovich) is a poetry academic at a Cape Town university, who quotes Byron at length and pens opera in his spare time. He is arrogance personified and is fully accustomed to talking - or buying - his way out of any problem. In a heavily-drawn parallel to his beloved Byron’s Lucifer, Lurie frequently yields to his base instincts, in crossing boundaries with a sex worker, and in a predatory dalliance with one of his students.
When he forges a test result for his undergraduate lover and the full extent of his abuse of authority is exposed, Lurie is brazenly unrepentant in the ensuing scandal, even boasting that the experience proved "enriching".
Relieved of his duties, he visits his daughter Lucy’s (Jessica Haines) isolated farm on the country’s Eastern Cape, and her pared back lifestyle sits uneasily with his own established prejudices.
A violent encounter turns everything on its head, and in the course of an afternoon Lurie is stripped of the power that all but defines him. It is replaced by an unfamiliar sense of shame and indignation, and he becomes increasingly frustrated at Lucy’s refusal to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Malkovich is at his ambiguous best as the 'Mad Heart' Lurie, and it's a testament to the subtleties of his performance – and indeed, to director Jacobs' and writer Monticelli’s non-judgemental style – that he elicits an empathetic response for such a largely unlikeable man. Jessica Haines is a revelation as the pragmatic Lucy. Though a newcomer to film, she’s a worthy foil to her onscreen father. Her fiercely independent Lucy teaches him the merits of acquiescence, and opens his eyes to the idea of workable compromise.
Director Jacobs keeps a check on the emotions, and the resulting film is a slow-burn meditation on power, guilt and redemption. The film’s themes are universal, though allegories of combat (sexual, racial, parental and bestial) and repressed violence speak to the struggles of contemporary South African society, and a mixed race pregnancy resulting from rape represents a delicate metaphor of hope after trauma.
