Entertainment

When color isn’t black and white

Ah, cruel fate. “Skin,” the first feature by docu mentarian Anthony Fabian, tells of lives ruined by a genetic quirk.

Set in apartheid-era South Africa, “Skin” is based on the real-life Sandra Laing, a dark-skinned girl born to white parents unaware of their black ancestry.

When her skin color leads to her expulsion from an all-white girls’ school, her father goes to court to prove the girl’s “whiteness.” Strong-minded, he insists that his daughter date only white men, and flips out when she becomes pregnant by a black vegetable seller. The resulting family schism isn’t resolved for decades.

Fabian obtains fine performances from bearded Sam Neill and Alice Krige as Sandra’s parents and, especially, from Sophie Okonedo (“The Secret Life of Bees”) as their daughter.

But the direction is never more than conventional, with a tear-inducing finale better suited to a TV soap opera.