REVIEW
NOWHERE IN AFRICA
Starring Juliane Köhler, Merab Ninidze and Karoline Eckertz
Written and directed by Caroline Link.
Opens Friday, April 18
Globe Cinema
At times captivatingly intimate and at other times boring as snot, Nowhere in Africa recently won the Oscar for best foreign-language film, which should tell you a lot about the topics this German epic touches on.
Holocaust? Check. Noble African savages? Check. Tender coming-of-age tale set against these twin backdrops? Check. Not to be too cynical about this otherwise decent film, but the fact that it won the prize in a year when the far superior Y tu mamá también and Talk to Her were released is a bit of a downer.
The screenplay was adapted from Stefanie Zweig’s autobiographical novel by director Caroline Link, whose Beyond Silence, about a hearing child raised by deaf parents, bagged an Oscar nomination in 1996. Link is obviously intrigued by the idea of children who are better equipped to deal with the world around them than their parents. Nowhere in Africa pays tribute to the resilience of Regina (Lea Kurka), the young daughter of a socialite (Juliane Köhler) and judge (Merab Ninidze) who also happen to be Jews during pre-Holocaust Germany. Early scenes show her father, Walter, already in self-imposed exile on a farm in Kenya, suffering from malaria and being cared for by the saintly Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), an indigenous cook who will become Regina’s best friend and mentor.
Walter asks his wife, Jettel, to bring a refrigerator when she and Regina escape the Nazis and join him, but instead she spends their last pennies on a fancy frock. This act reveals the extent of Jettel’s selfish ignorance, which sets her up to be predictably knocked down a peg or two over the course of the film. It also signals the marital discord that will become the film’s main source of dramatic intrigue, which is ironic when you consider the much more inherently dramatic stuff going on back home.
We witness Walter and Jettel’s distant, uneasy relationship through Regina’s eyes. The complications of their marriage – for most of the film they seem horribly mismatched, which makes their drive to reconcile that much sweeter – stand in sharp contrast to the simplistic portrayal of the Kenyans living and working on the farm. It’s a tad discomfiting to see natives frolicking in happy servitude to their European masters.
On top of the problematic characterizations, the story doesn’t progress so much as it just changes locations a few times. After Kenya’s British government realizes there are Germans in their midst, Walter is sent from the farm to a prison compound, but we watch incredulously as Jettel and Regina settle into a luxury hotel that’s been converted into an internment camp for women and children. But before the film can delve too deeply into the racial and social issues it raises, the setting shifts to Regina’s private school, with the actress playing Regina morphing into the teenage Karoline Eckertz, who also narrates the movie.
Life may be this episodic, but we expect the loose ends to be tied up in a film. A tentative attraction between Regina and an indigenous boy is never developed, nor is a subplot in which Walter goes off to war. Nowhere in Africa is aptly titled, since the film doesn’t seem to go anywhere, and it rests too heavily on the laurels of its exotic scenery and peoples. That said, the acting is affecting and the film does succeed in creating a haunting mood. |
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