‘Carissa’ Review: A South African Youth Portrait That Knows the Value of Stillness

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic Simultaneously still and transporting, set on the rooibos-growing slopes of South Africa’s Cedarberg mountains, “Carissa” is a coming-of-age story steeped in the character of an indigenous tea loved and mispronounced the world over — its mellow late-afternoon earthiness, its burnt floral aroma, its warm tobacco hue.

But if there’s a lot of muzzy magic-hour beauty in Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar’s debut feature, it’s no hollow travelogue: Closely scrutinizing its young, antsy title character before gradually expanding its gaze, “Carissa” is rich with feeling for the callused hands and hearts of an overlooked but industrious countryside population.

No surprise that our heroine dreams of escape, though this turns out not to be a town-versus-country fable. Instead, it’s the subtle but specific graduations of gentrification and rusticity within its remote locale that distinguish Jacobs and Delmar’s film from others of its ilk.

Likewise the detail and curiosity in its depiction of a rural Cape Coloured (not a slur but a specific multiracial group in South Africa) population hitherto little depicted even in local cinema.