“Nowhere in Africa”

By Anne Navarro
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- A German family seeks refuge from the growing Nazi threat in the remote plains of Kenya in the absorbing drama "Nowhere in Africa" (Zeitgeist).

Writer-director Caroline Link's period piece is based on Stefanie Zweig's autobiographical novel which recounts her Jewish family's self-exile from 1938 Germany, where Nazi persecution was becoming a reality of life. Beautifully capturing the vastness of the African countryside as juxtaposed with the swanky life lived by the Redlich family, the film transports the viewer to a different time and place.

Despite its two-and-a-half-hour length, the movie is fluid as it knits together various events and incidents in the family's lives, both as individuals and as a unit.

As the film opens, patriarch Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze) is being nursed back to health from a bout of malaria by his African cook Owuor (Sidede Onyulo) when he sends for his wife, Jettel (Juliane Kohler), and his 5-year-old daughter, Regina (Lea Kurka), to join him on the Kenyan farm. As the film flits back and forth between scenes of the rich African plains and the ritzy socialite parties attended by Jettel, there is the sense of the enormous disparity between one life and the other. Walter even comments that in his first life he was a lawyer, but now he is a farmer. The heavy feeling of impending doom as the Nazis close in is also palpable.

Marital tensions are sensed immediately. Jettel, unhappy to have left her comfortable life and unwilling to believe that the Nazis are truly a threat, makes her feelings known early on. These tensions run throughout the film as Jettel and Walter's marital commitment is tested by war and differing outlooks. But while Jettel wrestles with her new surroundings, young Regina thrives, learning the native tongue and appreciating the country's nature and the culture's rhythm.

"Nowhere in Africa" doesn't dwell on the persecution of this Jewish family. Instead it is a story about a family uprooted from all it knows and a young girl's childhood in an isolated place without the normal cultural reference points. The focus is the family members, in the midst of war and personal struggles, and their estrangement from home and, at times, from each other. It is a film about losing and finding one's identity, and finally moving on.

The versatility of the actors is impressive. Kohler is convincing as a bratty bourgeoisie who longs to wear her stylish clothes and feel attractive even in the remote farmland. Ninidze is competent as her husband, but their relationship is not as convincing as it should be. Both Kurka and Karoline Eckertz (who plays Regina as a teen-ager) are thoroughly natural and compelling.

Subtitles.

Because of some sexual encounters, an implied affair, fleeting nudity, a few disturbing moments and an instance of crass language, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. Not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America.

* Navarro is a part-time reviewer in the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.