Embeth Davidtz<\/a>, a versatile actor who moved us as Helen Hirsch in \u201cSchindler\u2019s List,\u201d but never again had such an important role \u2026 until now.<\/p>\n\n\tThe tongue-twisting title hails from Alexandra Fuller\u2019s memoir of the same name. A cursory investigation on my part reveals that it originated as the setup to a joke whose punchline, \u201cfor mother will be there,\u201d flies right over my head. But in Fuller\u2019s hands, the phrase takes on a different meaning: \u201cgoing to the dogs\u201d refers to the way English colonialists in the south African country (which sits just above South Africa on the map) felt about the 1980 election, wherein the Black majority won back control of their own destiny.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film is set in the lead-up to that upheaval, and though it assumes the perspective of Fuller and her family, who felt threatened by the violence that surrounded Robert Mugabe\u2019s victory, the movie doesn\u2019t take the side of its white characters. Davidtz, who was raised in neighboring South Africa (where the film was shot), brings priceless personal insight to this historic redistribution of power. <\/p>\n
\n\tOpting for an impressionistic approach, she privileges the textures and details an observant young person might recall of her childhood \u2014 the sound of insects, the songs they sung, the way it felt to be held by a Black nanny \u2014 while avoiding the clich\u00e9d imagery that movies like \u201cOut of Africa\u201d have implanted over the years (the romantic shots of elephants and unspoiled savannas). Africa is undeniably beautiful, but it\u2019s also complicated, and Davidtz embraces the thorniness of looking back with nostalgia at a home that wasn\u2019t necessarily hers to begin with.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn adapting Fuller\u2019s book, Davidtz follows the author\u2019s lead in presenting the transition from young Bobo\u2019s point of view (\u201cBobo\u201d was Alexandra\u2019s childhood nickname), collapsing the book\u2019s two-decade span to the critical year Fuller\u2019s family left Rhodesia. In the process, she reserves the role of Bobo\u2019s mother, Nicola, for herself. It\u2019s a showy and slightly self-indulgent part, this woman who sleeps with a machine gun and crushes ticks with her bare heel. Still, it\u2019s hard to fault the underused star for wanting to play such an extreme character \u2014 or for letting her unravel quite so dramatically on screen.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe actor-turned-helmer deserves even greater credit for the near-feral turn she coaxes from Lexi Venter, the inexperienced local girl she found to embody Bobo. With her matted blond hair and blazing brown eyes, Venter (who was 7 at the time) brings the intensity of a wild animal to the part, which is balanced by a kind of ironic voiceover in which Bobo naively repeats things she\u2019s heard the adults around her say (as when she refers to the \u201cterrorists\u201d who might raid their home at any time) or misinterprets grown-up behavior (describing loud noises in her parents\u2019 bedroom as \u201cmoving furniture with their clothes off\u201d).<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s a clever strategy, one that allowed Davidtz to shape Venter\u2019s performance in editing, using the child\u2019s narration to explain what\u2019s going on behind the girl\u2019s fierce gaze. The Fuller family represents a phenomenon common throughout the British empire, where middle-class whites left their home country to enjoy greater opportunity \u2014 and higher social standing \u2014 in the colonies. In Rhodesia, Bobo is waited on by Black servants, including her beloved Sarah (Zikhona Bali), who indulges the already spoiled child, to a degree, scolding Bobo when she sees her ordering the Black kids around: \u201cYou are too young to be bossing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBobo, her mother and slightly older sister Vanessa (Anina Reed) live on an expansive ranch in the country, which requires an armed convoy to protect them when they drive into town. Davidtz accentuates the sharp contrast between Bobo\u2019s lifestyle and that of her racist grandparents, who say things like, \u201cWe have breeding, which is better than money\u201d within earshot of \u201cthe help.\u201d With her fierce curiosity, Bobo absorbs everything around her and repeats what she sees without filter, offending her parents when she repeats how a family friend sexually assaulted Vanessa in front of her.<\/p>\n
\n\tTensions mount between Blacks and whites amid the elections, and Nicola \u2014 who starts out strong, \u00e0 la Sally Field in \u201cPlaces of the Heart,\u201d tending the homestead in her husband\u2019s absence \u2014 loses her mind as the world she built collapses around her. Davidtz hints at a family tragedy, but saves the reveal until late in a film that can sometimes be unclear, emphasizing sense memories over strict chronology (shooting from the back seat and under tables, to reinforce Bobo\u2019s perspective). The timeline is assembled in such a way that emotional touchstones can sometimes feel manipulative, considering how ruthlessly unsentimental Bobo\u2019s narration sounds. But it\u2019s nothing an intelligent audience can\u2019t parse. <\/p>\n
\n\tIf you\u2019re the sort who appreciates being immersed in an underrepresented moment in world history, don\u2019t let the title stop you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The title\u2019s a problem, but it would be a crying shame to let that discourage you from seeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,54156,75,337,54157,2559],"class_list":["post-92333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-embeth-davidtz","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-telluride-film-festival","tag-toronto-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}