I Dreamed of Africa

Kim Basinger, Vincent Perez, Eva Marie Saint. An Italian woman leaves her comfortable surroundings to live on a farm in Africa with her family-unaware that tragedy lies just ahead. Based on a true story. 2000/color/114 min/PG-13/fullscreen.

Based on the memoirs of party-girl-turned-conservationist Kuki Gallman, I Dreamed of Africa never comes close to living up to its title; the mood is more prosaic travelogue than oneiric wonderment. After a car accident warns Kuki of her mortality, she resolves to grow up, a process that mysteriously involves marrying a man she barely knows and moving with him and her young son to the wilds of South Africa. There she learns new beau Paolo is less reliable than she thought, but also that the sun-baked plains and roaming beasts of Africa speak to her in a way the nightlife of Italy did not. (We learn of her blossoming humanity because she introduces herself to the servants; a probing study of interpersonal relationships this isn't.) Kim Basinger obviously feels connected to the role--she can stride across a room with a majestic self-righteousness that the film should have drawn upon more--but she's defeated by a script composed of repetitive vignettes that have no cumulative effect and a director (Hugh Hudson) who keeps the film's emotional impact curiously flat and diffuse except for the crass, manipulative moments every 20 minutes or so. Sure the photography's lovely, but really, how hard is it to get a nice shot of flamingoes at dawn? --Bruce Reid