C

Somerset Maugham gets the full Masterpiece Theatre treatment
in Philip Haas’ filmization of the British author’s 1941
novella. To tell the truth, the book wasn’t one of Maugham’s
proudest achievements; he wrote it for a “ladies’ magazine”
during his wartime stay in the U.S., and it has a lot more in
common with Fanny Hurst and cinema poitboilers of the time
than with the writer’s more ambitious work. Still, on screen
it makes for a glossy, old-fashioned wartime romance, spiced
with some modest socio-political commentary and a plot
involving death and concealment. The result is entirely
unconvincing as drama, but amusing as pulpish melodrama in the
vein of (though hardly as pleasurable as) “Casablanca.”

The focus is on Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas), one of
those plucky but penniless glamorous British heroines so
beloved of English fiction (you can find them endlessly in
Agatha Christie stories). Mary, a lovely widow, decamps at a
beautiful Florentine villa as the result of the generosity of
friends, and she immediately enters into the social whirl of
the now-fascist city, hobnobbing with the ostentatiously
flamboyant Princess San Ferdinando (Anne Bancroft), catching
the eye of Mussolini’s local henchman Leopardi (Massimo
Ghini), falling in with gay, dissolute British expatriate Lucky
Leadbetter (Derek Jacobi), and even getting an immediate
proposal of marriage from an old friend, the uptight, rigorous
Sir Edgar Swift (James Fox), who’s about to become governor-
general of India. When Swift departs on government business,
however, Mary gets involved with two other guys: a nervous
Austrian exile named Karl (Jeremy Davies), with whom she has a
one-night stand out of a sense of pity, and wealthy but married
American Rowley Flint (Sean Penn), a well-tooled but ever-so-
slightly disreputable fellow not unlike Humphrey Bogart’s north
African Rick. Mary’sflightiness leads to a death, a not-quite-
successful coverup, some blackmail, and a denouement centering
on which man she’ll eventually wind up with; indeed, there are
lots of pulpy plot complications added to the mix, although–to
be sure–they’re all handled by helmer Philip Haas with the
greatest of taste and discretion, and so made to seem less
obviously silly than they actually are.

Scott Thomas gets through the material with a minimum of
embarrassment by keeping a stiff upper lip throughout even
the most nerve-wracking moments (Fox does likewise, but that’s
nothing new). Penn is surprisingly at ease in his undemanding
role, exuding an underated charm that’s fairly effective.
Bancroft, as usual, overplays, but in this context she adds a
bit of life to the usually sedate proceedings, while Davies
fusses about in his usual fashion, nonetheless earning some
sympathy. Ghini give a trace of credibility to what’s
basically a stock character, but even Jacobi can’t do much
with the part of an effeminate, cynical observer of events.

If looked at realistically, “Up at the Villa” is a fairly
absurd story, but it’s been gussied up to a brilliant sheen,
and the Italian settings are extremely attractive (kudos to
cinematographer Maurizio Calvesi and designer Paul Brown for
their work). There’s also a nicely lush score by Pino
Donaggio to add to its atmosphere of fuzzy warmth. The whole
thing isn’t credible for a moment, but at least it has a
story to tell (unlike the similarly-set “Tea With Mussolini,”
which was all atmosphere and quirky characterization), however
ridiculous it all might seem; and despite the fact that it’s
second- or third-rate Maugham, it manages in this cinemtic
guise at least to hold one’s interest.

D

More nightmare than dream, Hugh Hudson’s pictorially grandiose
but dramatically sloppy and episodic filmization of noted
conservationist Kuki Gallmann’s reminiscences of her life in
Kenya is a quintessential woman’s picture, akin to one of Ross
Hunter’s glossy weepies but set in a more exotic locale. The
story of the single mother whisked away with her young son to
the Dark Continent by her new husband, a handsome but somewhat
irresponsible Italian, and of the familial peaks and valleys
the trio go through over the span of a decade or so, “I Dreamed
of Africa” is pretty to look at, with scenic views that
resemble picture postcards. But it’s about as exciting and
coherent as a postcard, too, lurching uneasily from incident
to incident like a bloated mini-series from which half the
scenes have been cut and the other half are run at half-speed.
What’s intended as the tale of one woman’s fascination with
Africa and her growing self-confidence in the face of family
turmoil and increasing sense of responsibity for the
preservation of the environment comes across instead as an
unfocused, disconnected series of arbitrary episodes that
never develop any dramatic unity or emotional punch.

Perhaps the saga of squabbles with poachers and one another,
encounters with local tribesmen and dangerous animals, and
family tragedies could have worked if some intelligent
transitions had been fashioned to tie the material together,
and more than the most cliched sort of dialogue penned for
the characters. But such is not the case. The acting doesn’t
help, either. Kim Basinger is simply terrible in the lead
role; she resembles a model from the Lana Turner school of
performance rather than an actress of any consequence, and
her line readings are often incredibly amateurish. (It’s
unfortunate, too, that the protagonist is named Kuki–a
moniker repeated endlessly in the flat dialogue, and which
causes some viewers of a certain age automatically to think
about Edd Byrnes being asked to lend one his comb.) Vincent
Perez is colorless as her rambunctious spouse; he fails to
generate the charisma needed to engender the intended romantic
chemistry. Liam Aiken is merely okay as Kuki’s son at age
seven; Garrett Strommen has some presence as the teenaged
version of the character, but his motivations are so muddled
that the boy remains opaque and emotionally distant. It’s
nice to encounter Eva Marie Saint on film again as Kuki’s
fashion-conscious mother, but it’s a nothing role, and the
character appears and disappears with bewildering suddenness.
One might also mention the old-fashioned score by Maurice
Jarre, which sounds mostly like rejected scraps from the
music he composed long ago for “Lawrence of Arabia” (although
toward the close some African chants are employed, too).

Technically “I Dreamed of Africa” is pretty impressive (with
the obvious exception of Scott Thomas’ poor editing). The
cinematography by Bernard Lutic creates some lush, though
largely static, images, and the production design and art
direction are certainly professional. But all the lustre
Africa has to offer isn’t enough to overcome the calamitous
deficiencies in the writing and acting. In terms of films
about Africa, Hugh Hudson’s picture falls between “Out of
Africa” and “Gorillas in the Mist” on the one hand and the
awful Anthony Hopkins vehicle “Instinct” on the other.
Unfortunately, it leans more toward the latter end of the
spectrum.