Jump the Gun
Directed by Les Blair
With Michele Burgers, Baby Cele, Lionel Newton, Thalani Nyembe, Rapulana Seiphemo and Danny Keogh
Screening at the 44th Sydney Film Festival, June 2-20
Review by Norm Dixon
For the past century or so, Johannesburg has been a magnet for South Africans — black and white — seeking work, excitement, fame or fortune.
Against the backdrop of eGoli's — the city of gold — bright lights, high hopes and grim reality is set this endearing film about ordinary South Africans learning to live with each other.
In the tacky bars and crowded mean streets of inner-city Hillbrow — a lot like Sydney's Kings Cross or London's Soho — Jump the Guns' urban working-class characters begin to build post-apartheid relationships — some more fitfully and clumsily than others — and confront their psychological baggage.
Despite the fall of political apartheid, with economic apartheid as entrenched as ever, South Africa's social apartheid won't disappear quickly. Middle- and upper-class whites have fled to the plush northern suburbs, closely followed by some of the rising black middle class.
But it is in the bars and streets of urban Jo'burg, that working-class and "lowlife" whites, too poor or unwilling to flee north, are mingling with the new black residents of the city's flats or Sowetans coming to town to enjoy the night-life.
Clint (Lionel Newton) is an amiable but naive Afrikaner bumpkin, an oil worker with some time off. He hasn't visited Jo'burg for a long time, and the changes surprise him: "South Africa's getting very African" he says, shaking his head.
Clint ends up a Hillbrow bar run by the marvellously droll but "fucked up" J.J. (Danny Keogh). There he meets down-but-not-yet-out Minnie (brilliantly played by Michele Burgers, who starred in Friends, another Channel Four film set in South Africa). Minnie and Clint hit it off with the help of lots of whiskey and a little cocaine.
Gugu (Baby Cele) has also just arrived in town from Durban, hoping to become a singer. She's been jerked around by men for too long, so decides to use them to get money and an audition. Unfortunately, she picks the wrong sugar daddy, a wheelchair-bound gangster (Thaluni Nyembe), who discovers Gugu's duplicity and kidnaps her.
Gugu escapes and, by chance, runs into Clint and Minnie at J.J.'s. Gugu is the first black woman Clint has ever really spoken to. Together all three, to varying degrees, explore the possibilities for friendship in the new South Africa.
Jump the Gun is a warm and refreshing film that goes beyond the stereotypes — in terms of both characters and setting — we have come to expect of films set in South Africa. It conveys well the edginess, danger, vibrancy and excitement of modern urban South Africa. It also gives a glimpse of the great social and cultural potential that lies ahead if the country can overcome the legacy of apartheid.
My only reservation with this film is its suggestion that South Africans must move beyond the mind set established during the "struggle" years. This is personified by the bitterly unhappy former ANC self-defence unit member turned gangster.
The personal liberation that still awaits the majority of South Africans will be possible only when the apartheid legacy of poverty, homelessness and unemployment is eliminated. And that still requires considerable political struggle.
Jump the Gun is lekker. See it.