Boesman and Lena

Adapted from Athol Fugard’s 1969 play, John Berry’s final feature stars Glover and Angela Bassett as the titular couple, forced into a nomadic existence after being booted from their shantytown in apartheid-era South Africa. Boesman and Lena get by on the negligible income they receive from recycling bottles, and bicker endlessly as to whose fault it is that they find themselves in this bleak position. But the arrival of an aging Xhosa tribesman introduces a new dynamic and a new tension into their way of life. Bassett is excellent as a proud woman struggling to keep her pain at bay, and Glover shines as a man who, having lost it all, wrestles with his bitterness and brutishness in hopes of recovering his own humanity.