Staff Photographer
The last few Afrikaans movies were so awful that I think I went into Hond Se Dinges with very low expectations. As it turned out, I found it a pleasant surprise.
Not that it’s a great masterpiece of our national cinema, but it does what it does rather well. It’s a comedy with a bit of a thriller element and a dash of love story, entirely populist in its intentions, and it fulfils that brief very competently. It’s not a gross-out farce like Poena Is Koning or a pallid imitation of the American school-sports genre like Bakgat — it may even be made for adults. The tradition it feeds on is that of such oldies as Stadig oor die Klippe and Lord Oom Piet, making it a homegrown comedy not a million miles from the kind of thing we’ve seen a lot of on television before, but it is homegrown and it works.
The key to its success, I think, is to keep the plot rolling at a merry pace. The focal character is one Dolf de Lange, a Kerkorrelish rock star who, when his band falls apart, leaves the big city to return to Lichtenburg and return an old orrel to his oupa, Oudolf, who lives there. Oudolf must be the last living private diamond miner in Lichtenburg, still trying to scratch something that glitters from the alluvium. There’s a history, too, given to us in a flashback, of a mega-diamond found by Dolf’s dad before he was murdered by some skelms.
Alongside this basic outline, there’s Lara, a pretty young Lichtenberg reporter who interviews Oudolf and later gets involved in Dolf’s troubles. I think you can see where that’s going. Then there’s Nardus, a berserk record company executive, Bertus, Dolf’s druggy friend and former bandmate, the loan sharks who are after him and Dolf, as well as odd denizens of Lichtenberg, including the town whore, Rooi Sarie, and her security guard lover, Rommel, who in turn complicate matters further. Oh, and there is also Oudolf’s Jack Russell, Pernans, who plays a central role in the plot.
The core of the film is to be found in the hammy but very amusing performances by Marcel van Heerden as Oudolf, Nicola Hanekom as Rooi Sarie and Frank Opperman as Rommel. Opperman’s Rommel gets the prelude, marching and muttering angrily down a country road, and by the end of the movie we will have discovered why he’s in such a state. (Opperman also contributed to the story, which was then scripted by Johan Heyns and Johann Potgieter; the former directed.) Honourable mention should also go to Louw Venter as Dolf’s daggaroker friend Bertus — he’s hilarious.
Ivan Botha, one of the stars of Bakgat, plays Dolf. He’s a rather anodyne presence, though personable enough. He will probably bring in the Afrikaans teenyboppers in droves. Tinarie van Wyk Loots as Lara isn’t bad either, but I found Lara’s knowing and cutesy voice-over rather irritating. Still, it helps hold the film together and remind us where we are in the storyline.
More that that, there’s not much to say. Hond Se Dinges is frequently very silly, but it does make one laugh. Afrikaans filmgoers seem more committed to the cinema than any other population group in this country, so it even stands a chance of making money. As the work of Leon Schuster demonstrates, this kind of filmgoer seems to relish faecal humour, and Hong Se Dinges fully fulfils its commitments in that department. I’m happy to say, though, that the faeces in question are not human but canine.