In the new film High Fantasy from South African filmmaker Bass (Love The One You Love), four young people (Qondiswa James, Lisa Scholtz, Francesca Varrie Michel, Nala Khumalo) drive to a remote farm for a weekend getaway, unexpectedly switch bodies and freak out about it.
What first seems like a gimmicky no-budget project turns out to be an ingenious way to explore the issues of sex, race and gender that run deep in the South African character. These kids grew up in a post-apartheid world, but all those tensions are still coiled underneath, waiting to rise and complicate an already impossible situation.
Bass and her actors play it out with impressive facility, shifting from goofy teasing to raw-nerve honesty – and back again – as easily as they swap identities. And for a movie shot on an iPhone, it looks fantastic.
Source: Now Toronto