The Wound movie review & film summary (2017)

The film is set within the Xhosa community of rural South Africa and takes place during the period of Ukwaluka, an annual rite of passage for young male teens to symbolize their move into adulthood. In it, the boys are taken up to the mountains where one of the elder tribesmen circumcises them one by one, imploring them to yell out “I’m a man!” while he makes the incision. The boys then spend the next couple of weeks out there fasting and having traditional notions of masculinity drummed into them while their wounds heal. (This ritual used to be a secret but after word of it began to leak out, most notably when Nelson Mandela made reference to it in his autobiography, it has become a topic of heated controversy amongst the community.)

Having undergone the ritual himself when he was a teenager, Xolani (Nakhane Toure), now a lonely warehouse worker in his mid-30s, returns every year to serve as one of the “caregivers” to one of the new boys, but his interest in the ritual is halfhearted at best. No, what brings him back is the opportunity to, however briefly, reestablish his sexual relationship with childhood friend and fellow caregiver Vija (Bongile Mantsai). Although Xolani dreams of the two of them running off together, Vija, who has a wife and family in town and projects a hyper-masculine pose to everyone, clearly does not feel the same way. It is clear that Vija regards him as a convenient tool for gratification and nothing more.

Xolani’s charge this year is Kwanda (Niza Jay Ncoyini), a young man who lives in Johannesburg with his mother, who has been brought there by his father, a tribesman made good, who fears that his son is “too soft.” Far more sophisticated than the other boys undergoing the ritual, Kwanda alienates his peers and elders alike with his diffident attitude and his piercing questions about why the Ukwaluka rite even exists at all. It doesn’t take Xolani too long to figure out that, in addition to everything else, Kwanda is also gay, just about the biggest no-no of all in this particular community. What makes this even trickier is that Kwanda not only realizes that Xolani is gay as well but has a fairly good idea of the true nature of his relationship with Vija. Before long, tensions begin to rise between the three with Xolani and Vija beginning to crack under the pressure of trying to be something that they aren’t and Kwanda, for all of his smarts, not realizing how much danger he is now in.

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