SA’s ‘Catching Feelings’ Now Streaming on Netflix

Kagiso Lediga and Pearl Thusi star in ‘Catching Feelings’ (2017), a dark comedy mining the humorous depths of Johannesburg’s 30-something black middle class.

Written and directed by Lediga (‘Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola’, ‘The Bantu Hour’, ‘The Pure Monate Show’, ‘Bunny Chow’), the Netflix film alights on once celebrated author turned English professor Max Matsane and his journalist wife Sam who open their home to Andrew Buckland’s Heiner Miller, a novelist slash national treasure recovering after a heady cocktail of sex, drugs and zero f*cks lands him in hospital.

Topical and conversational rather than particularly gripping in its narrative, ‘Catching Feelings’ draws on Lediga’s comedic prowess to quip about everything from the state of society in post-apartheid South Africa, gentrification, poverty porn, blesser culture, racism and relationships.

First-rate in its showcasing of Johannesburg as a sophisticated, multicultural metropolis where the middle class black intelligentsia can swan from one industry event to the next while struggling to live the suburbian dream amidst baby nixing financial woes, career slumps and ambition, the film gives some honest insight into what many would perceive as success.

A good job, a beautiful wife, a house in the suburbs, intercity speaking engagements and a pretty young thing seducing in the wings.

Foreshadowing some JM Coetzee style disgrace in Max’s blossoming relationship with one of his students, ‘Catching Feelings’ is a film that balks at all-out drama choosing instead to consider seemingly innocuous interactions and rhetoric to underscore subtle racism, microaggressions, classism and the contrast between the trajectory of two writers celebrated in their youth, one older and white, the other younger and black.

Also starring Akin Omotoso, Precious Makgaretsa, Kate Liquorish and Tessa Jubber, the film is a treat of solid acting though the woman characters are significantly sidelined when it comes to the great lines and incisive commentary.

Thusi, fabulous as Sam, is largely relegated to nagging about money and drunkenly giggling in her underwear with just one scene in which she highlights sexual harassment in the journalistic workplace.

Makgaretsa’s feminist poet is framed as angry and somewhat insufferable, Liquorish’s Tabitha is philandering and emotional and Jubber’s journalist ends her interview calling heartily for numerous rounds of shots before presumably shagging Heiner in the bathroom.

Happily, when it comes to soothing Max’s self-inflicted wounds born of a projection of his own infidelity, Sam choses to do her rather than labour emotionally for a man who clearly has some work to do on himself as regards his professional slump, alcohol abuse and issues of trust.

A mature, slow-burning offering and interesting take on modern, middle class, black South African relationships, ‘Catching Feelings’ is layered, relevant and certainly worth a stream.

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