MovieChat Forums > Skoonheid (2012) Discussion > So what really happened at the end??? (s...

So what really happened at the end??? (spoiler)


I hate movies with ambiguous endigs, but what did happen with Christian, was he killed by Francios (w/ the shirt on the pool) or was paid off (as with Christian holding an envelop with cash)???. I badly wanna know.

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Christian was not killed. After the rape ends, you can hear him whimpering and see him starting to get up. Moreover, Francois asks Annika after the fact if she still hears from Christian, and she said somtimes. So no, he was not killed, and that was never Francois' intent.

I do believe that Christian demanded money and that Francois paid him off with a large sum of cash.

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When the pair are sat in the cafe after Christian had picked him up from the nightclub, the scene ends with Christian saying 'Can I ask you something?'

In the next scene they are in the hotel room and Christian carries on the conversation, saying something like 'it is a sure deal, but you're the only person I know who has the money'. So he is hitting his uncle up for cash.

At the end of the movie, I assume that's what the cash is for, in part because his nephew wanted it but also to make amends.

The clothes being found in the pool came several scenes earlier in the film, I assumed it was a symbol of the things you find when you go digging around in the dark depths. Or something like that. The whole film was a bit hard to grasp, I found the main actor entirely inscrutable, I was never sure what he was thinking or why he did the things he did.

What I didn't understand at all is why he reported his car stolen at the beach, what was I missing there?

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1) "Oom" or uncle translated from Afrikaans, is a common term of respect that Afrikaans youngsters use to address their elders. Francois is a family friend of Christian's parents, not his biological uncle.

2) He reported his car stolen because he was furious and jealous that his daughter was seeing Christian (she was the girl with Christian on the beach and she had taken her father's car down to Cape Town to visit Christian).

The movie is a comment on the repression of South African/Afrikaaner masculinity. You are not supposed to really ever know what the lead character is feeling because he is so obsessed with controlling his hidden life. He became obsessed with this young man and for me, the saddest scene is near the end when he sees the openly gay couple in the restaurant and as an audience, you know this is what he will never allow himself to experience (very much a contextual issue of a super-macho Afrikaner masculinity in South Africa).

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When his wife was driving Francois after he got home from Cape Town (maybe she had to pick him up at the airport?), she asks if he saw the doctor in CT. He says HE wasn't in the car when it was carjacked.

I read that as the cover story for why poor Christian was beaten up--he would have to have had some major bruises around his throat the way he was choked, and bruises from being punched in the face. The cover would be that Chris was driving Francois's car, and he was carjacked. Maybe Francois promised Chris the money, or maybe Chris was too embarrassed/humiliated/in shock to tell his parents or report the crime to the police.

Chris definitely wasn't killed.

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[deleted]

Was Chris gay?


I never got the impression he was.

I was horrified with that rape scene.


It was extremely horrifying and horrific.

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[deleted]

Yeah. Coz if he thought that that would happen he'd have not used anything...

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[deleted]

Poor guy. He must have been broken after that. But he was very cute.

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[deleted]

And once he'd recovered from the physical assault, it became a matter of recovering from the psychological and emotional and mental trauma.

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