Caroline Link’s wonderful, woefully obscure Best Foreign Film winner is an entertaining story of the perils of wartime emigration. It hits hard right now, with our own immigration crackdown underway. A Jewish family smartly escapes Nazi Germany at the 11th hour, only to find themselves imprisoned in detention camps by the British — who ironically consider them dangerous enemy aliens. The show is a glorious growing-up tale for a German tot transplanted to Kenya, and becomes an edgy romantic story when the mother repurposes her amorous needs to help rescue her family.
Nowhere in Africa
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber / Zeitgeist
20019 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 141 min. / Nirgendwo in Afrika / Street Date February 27, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.95
Starring Merab Ninidze, Juliane Köhler, Lea Kurka, Karoline Eckertz, Sidede Onyulo, Matthias Habich, Herbert Knaup
Cinematography Gernot Roll
Production Designer Susann Bieling, Uwe Szielasko
Film Editor Patricia Rommel
Original Music Niki Reiser, Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock
Written by Caroline...
Nowhere in Africa
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber / Zeitgeist
20019 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 141 min. / Nirgendwo in Afrika / Street Date February 27, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.95
Starring Merab Ninidze, Juliane Köhler, Lea Kurka, Karoline Eckertz, Sidede Onyulo, Matthias Habich, Herbert Knaup
Cinematography Gernot Roll
Production Designer Susann Bieling, Uwe Szielasko
Film Editor Patricia Rommel
Original Music Niki Reiser, Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock
Written by Caroline...
- 2/17/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
TORONTO -- While based on a well-known autobiography in Europe, this film version, "White Masai" ("Die Weisse Massai"), is a startling experience for North American viewers unfamiliar with the true story of Corinne Hofmann. The Swiss-born woman fell in love with a Masai warrior while on holiday in Kenya. She eventually married the man only to face seemingly insurmountable cultural obstacles to establishing a reasonably settled home in the bush with the warrior.
Thanks to a collaboration between veteran German director Hermine Huntgeburth and actress Nina Hoss, this woman -- called Carola here -- comes across as no hippy adventuress, but rather a charming though problematic combination of idealist and stubborn pragmatist.
Future festival dates will determine whether audience response warrants a North American acquisition. The film certainly contains enough riveting exotica and intriguing human relationships for art houses. Its major market certainly will be in Western Europe.
The film flows efficiently from early scenes in Mombasa, where Carola and Lemalian (Jacky Ido) first meet. Carola's traveling companion, a boyfriend, is enough of a jerk to motivate her seeming flight from reality.
The scenes of dusty travel and Carola's introduction to the crude village underscore the obvious: This will be no picnic. But the giddy happiness of the couple -- who speak enough English, a second language for them both, to communicate -- looks like it might get them through those rough patches. For awhile, it does.
Carola must adjust to strange foods and customs. A bout of malaria simply comes with the territory. She coolly changes the couple's approach to loving-making so that it becomes an enjoyable experience for them both.
When she uses her money to buy a jeep, Lemalian expresses great joy only to have his feelings hurt over her anger when he crashes into a tree. Even a local Italian priest (Nino Prester), who initially mistakes Carola for a foolish thrill-seeker, is impressed by her ability to adapt.
But Carola cannot overcome some cultural divisions. She is horrified that female circumcision is still practiced in the backwater village. And her husband's unwillingness to help a woman dying in childbirth distresses her.
After the difficult birth of their own child, the relationship takes a downward turn. Carola has opened a grocery store. Not understanding the basics of capitalism, Lemalian extends credit to all family and friends, essentially giving products away.
He grows even uneasy about all the male customers who enter and speak freely with his wife. His jealous rages have less to do with his belief that she entertains boyfriends than an increasingly unwillingness to participate in a marriage of equals. Women, in Lemalian's culture, occupy a place right after goats.
Hoss is extraordinary in her portrayal of a woman of towering strengths yet understandable vulnerabilities. The film also enjoys a huge contribution from Jacky Ido, who provides a window into a way of thinking and living, which a Westerner may find backwards yet is so rooted in generational culture as to be unshakable.
Even at 132 minutes, the film can't address all our questions. Did Carola ever confront the village over the abomination that is female circumcision? How did the store survive after her refusal to issue more credit? How was the child to be raised?
The natural beauty of rural East Africa makes a gorgeous setting for the story, and the many native actors and extras root the movie in a documentary-like reality.
WHITE MASAI
Constantin Films
Credits: Director: Hermine Huntgeburth
Writer: Johannes W. Betz
Base on the book by: Corinne Hofmann
Producer: Gunter Rohrbach
Director of photography: Martin Langer
Production designer: Susann Bieling, Uwe Szielasko
Costumes: Maria Dimler
Music: Niki Reisert
Editor: Eva Schnare
Cast:
Carola: Nina Hoss
Lemalian: Jacky Ido
Stefan: Janek Rieke
Elisabeth: Katja Flint
Priest: Nino Prester
Running time -- 132 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Thanks to a collaboration between veteran German director Hermine Huntgeburth and actress Nina Hoss, this woman -- called Carola here -- comes across as no hippy adventuress, but rather a charming though problematic combination of idealist and stubborn pragmatist.
Future festival dates will determine whether audience response warrants a North American acquisition. The film certainly contains enough riveting exotica and intriguing human relationships for art houses. Its major market certainly will be in Western Europe.
The film flows efficiently from early scenes in Mombasa, where Carola and Lemalian (Jacky Ido) first meet. Carola's traveling companion, a boyfriend, is enough of a jerk to motivate her seeming flight from reality.
The scenes of dusty travel and Carola's introduction to the crude village underscore the obvious: This will be no picnic. But the giddy happiness of the couple -- who speak enough English, a second language for them both, to communicate -- looks like it might get them through those rough patches. For awhile, it does.
Carola must adjust to strange foods and customs. A bout of malaria simply comes with the territory. She coolly changes the couple's approach to loving-making so that it becomes an enjoyable experience for them both.
When she uses her money to buy a jeep, Lemalian expresses great joy only to have his feelings hurt over her anger when he crashes into a tree. Even a local Italian priest (Nino Prester), who initially mistakes Carola for a foolish thrill-seeker, is impressed by her ability to adapt.
But Carola cannot overcome some cultural divisions. She is horrified that female circumcision is still practiced in the backwater village. And her husband's unwillingness to help a woman dying in childbirth distresses her.
After the difficult birth of their own child, the relationship takes a downward turn. Carola has opened a grocery store. Not understanding the basics of capitalism, Lemalian extends credit to all family and friends, essentially giving products away.
He grows even uneasy about all the male customers who enter and speak freely with his wife. His jealous rages have less to do with his belief that she entertains boyfriends than an increasingly unwillingness to participate in a marriage of equals. Women, in Lemalian's culture, occupy a place right after goats.
Hoss is extraordinary in her portrayal of a woman of towering strengths yet understandable vulnerabilities. The film also enjoys a huge contribution from Jacky Ido, who provides a window into a way of thinking and living, which a Westerner may find backwards yet is so rooted in generational culture as to be unshakable.
Even at 132 minutes, the film can't address all our questions. Did Carola ever confront the village over the abomination that is female circumcision? How did the store survive after her refusal to issue more credit? How was the child to be raised?
The natural beauty of rural East Africa makes a gorgeous setting for the story, and the many native actors and extras root the movie in a documentary-like reality.
WHITE MASAI
Constantin Films
Credits: Director: Hermine Huntgeburth
Writer: Johannes W. Betz
Base on the book by: Corinne Hofmann
Producer: Gunter Rohrbach
Director of photography: Martin Langer
Production designer: Susann Bieling, Uwe Szielasko
Costumes: Maria Dimler
Music: Niki Reisert
Editor: Eva Schnare
Cast:
Carola: Nina Hoss
Lemalian: Jacky Ido
Stefan: Janek Rieke
Elisabeth: Katja Flint
Priest: Nino Prester
Running time -- 132 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/15/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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