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Review:
Africa is a beautiful dream. The scenery! The wildlife! It's
exquisite. But unless it's a travelogue made for the IMAX screen,
a film must be more than pretty pictures.  This
has nothing but pretty pictures, and is extremely dull..
Kuki Gallmann(Kim Basinger) is getting a lift home with a guy
named Paolo(Vincent Perez), his wife and a few other people when
they get run off the road by a drunken truck driver. Paulo's wife
is killed and Kuki is badly injured. Happily she is visited by her
mother Franca (Eva Marie Saint) and son Emanuele(Liam Aiken),
Paulo too. Soon Kuki and Paulo fall in love, and he asks her to
move with him to Kenya, where his brother has a farm. So she takes
him up on the offer and with "Emma" in tow, they head
off for the beautiful great rift valley.
 Then they live
there. years go by. Paulo goes on safari a lot, Emma collects
snakes grows up to be played by Garrett Strommen and Kuki grows
stuff. Life goes on. That's it. No compelling story, no
characterization outside that of Kuki, nada. That's it.
Paulo is impetuous and Emma seems nice enough.  The
locals are depicted as either villainous poachers or Indians from
a very old western. We don't see anyone except Kuki as anything
more than a cipher.
The question is: why would anyone have actually financed this
poor excuse for a film? The first rule of filmmaking is keep the
audience interested. This violates that. This induces sleep, and
if you do manage to stay awake, you'll find a stick figure
universe that bears on resemblance to the real world. Basinger is
wonderful, but she can't shoulder an entire film. Don't waste your
money.
Eric Lurio
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