Spud 3: Learning to Fly (2014)

Spud 3: Learning to Fly: Directed by John Barker. With Troye Sivan, Sven Ruygrok, Blessing Xaba, Genna Blair. As Spud Milton continues his awkward stagger through adolescence, he learns one of life’s most important lessons: When dealing with women and cretins, nothing is ever quite as it seems. “I’m practically a man in most areas,” writes Spud confidently on his sixteenth birthday. The year is 1992 and, in South Africa, radical change is in the air. The country may be on the bumpy road to an uncertain future, but Spud Milton is hoping for a smooth ride as he returns to boarding school as a senior. Instead, he discovers that his vindictive arch enemy is back to taunt him and that a garrulous Malawian has taken residence in his dormitory, along with the regular inmates and misfits he calls friends. Spud’s world has never seemed less certain; he attempts to master Shakespeare, wrestles constantly with his God, and the power of negative thinking, and develops an aversion to fried fish after a shocking discovery about his grandmother, Wombat.

“Well-worth seeing! Marco Bellocchio succeeds in analysing the rot and opportunism affecting a typical bourgeois family in the late 80s. Long gone is the optimism of the revolutionary 60s and 70s. But underneath all the muck there still is enough life and spontaneity there waiting to break through not only sexually but hopefully politically too. A very authentic, not at all dogmatic film, one which succeeds in showing the erotic side of love without falling into the trap of cheapness or boredom.”