Cowgirl in the Karoo: local Western is a galloping success

Three women, two guns, one horse and the Karoo landscape stretching to infinity: SA’s first female Western by Jenna Bass has all these, plus an offbeat plot that rampages along to the last laugh, and an unexpected ending.

Jenna Bass, the scriptwriter and director of Flatland, has subverted the cowboy genre with her imprint: an unorthodox take on a familiar world.

“It’s a bit of a Western and road movie cross-detective movie, with Tarantino-ish elements,” says actress Faith Baloyi, impeccable in Flatland as the steely but big-hearted detective Beauty Cuba. Her deadpan stare and delivery, the getaway horse and gun slinging give the film its Clint Eastwood edge, but Bass goes beyond macho conventions, probing instead the inner turmoil of her star-crossed lovers and their apartheid scars...