Skoonheid / Beauty

Present-day South Africa. Forty-something Francois manages a carpenter’s workshop and leads a comfortable life. His two daughters have flown the nest and he now lives alone with his wife in a well-furnished house in Bloemfontein. Under this seemingly smooth veneer, passion has given way to a tightly-controlled yet tense routine in both his marriage and his everyday working life. Francois has kept his homosexuality hidden for years. It is a part of his life that he lives out at privately organised, highly secretive sex meetings. His carefully-constructed façade is undermined, however, when he meets Christian, 20 years younger than himself, the son of an old friend and a guest at his daughter’s wedding. The charming law student becomes the object of his freshly awoken desires. It seems as if Francois, who have never learned to deal with his feelings or his sexuality, will finally tear down the walls he has built up around himself.