The Rights of Desire

Plot

A meditation on love and aging, loneliness and fulfillment, guilt, innocence and loss. Ruben Oliver's life is coming adrift from its moorings. He's been forced to take early retirement from his job as a librarian and adjust to the new political realities of South Africa. His wife has died. His best friend, Johnny MacFarlane has been brutally murdered. One of his sons has moved to Australia, the other is emigrating to Canada and trying to persuade Ruben that it's too dangerous to stay. The only constants are his old family home in the suburbs of Cape Town, haunted by the ghost of a young slave woman - and his housekeeper Magrieta, with whom he's shared a long history. When beautiful Tessa Butler comes out of the rain one night in response to his ad for a boarder, Ruben is captivated. She pulls him into a world of passion, and her turbulent past.