Proteus

2003 Drama

Canadian filmmaker John Greyson teams up with South African activist Jack Lewis to direct the period romantic drama Proteus. Based on a true story from 1735, the story involves a forbidden love affair between two prisoners in a colony near Cape Town. Black servant Claas Blank (Rouxnet Brown) is arrested for stealing back his own cattle from a white man. Because he has learned to speak English and Dutch, he is allowed to help European botanist Virgil Niven (Shaun Smyth) cultivate flowers. Part of his punishment is fetching water with white Dutch prisoner Jacobsz (Neil Sandilands), who eventually becomes his lover. After Niven leaves the colony, Blank and Jacobsz are caught and forced to confess. Proteus was shown at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival.

Director: John Greyson

Starring: Rouxnet Brown, Neil Sandilands, Shaun Smyth, Kristen Thomson, Tessa Jubber

 10 Reviews  1 Awards

Reviews

  • This unusually rich film tackles not only the social structuring of criminality and sexuality but race as well, and explores the ways science has been used to justify the ruthless pursuit of market interests and, eventually, apartheid itself.

    Ken Fox - TV Guide

    28 May 2013

  • Greyson does a terrifically empathetic job of putting viewers firmly in the moment, by making it irrelevant exactly when and where that moment takes place.

    Tasha Robinson - The A.V. Club

    28 May 2013

  • Proteus is involving and affecting even if it is not completely coherent or fully realized.

    Kevin Thomas - Los Angeles Times

    28 May 2013

  • Proteus has enough erotic and exotic content to win back some of the arthouse viewers previously beguiled by Greyson's "Lilies." But pic lacks that gem's lush aesthetics and impassioned complexity, ending up a tad remote.

    Dennis Harvey - Variety

    28 May 2013

  • Ultimately, the sex scenes seem of far more interest to the filmmakers than the narrative or characterizations, which are rendered in frustratingly vague and often deliberately confusing fashion.

    Frank Scheck - The Hollywood Reporter

    28 May 2013

Awards

  • John Greyson

    Festróia - Tróia International Film Festival (2004)

     

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