Double bill of films set in Kenya.
‘The Constant Gardener’ (2005) is a hard-hitting political thriller based on the novel by John Le Carre, and is the first English-speaking feature from director Fernando Meirelles. When political activist Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz, in an Oscar-winning performance) is found brutally murdered in Kenya, her widowed husband, unassuming minor diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), becomes increasingly belligerent in his attempt to solve the mystery of her death, to the surprise of his British High Commission colleagues. Haunted by remorse and by insidious rumours of his wife’s infidelities, Quayle uses his access to diplomatic secrets to unearth a vast and dangerous conspiracy about the methods of big pharmaceutical companies and the exploitation of the Third World by the West, at the same time discovering more about the beautiful young wife he never really knew.
‘Out of Africa’ (1985) is a romantic tale of colonial life based on the adventures of Karen Blixen. Karen (Meryl Streep) arrives in Africa in 1914 and marries Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Their marriage soon cools into a ‘civilised’ separation, but Karen finds herself falling in love with the wild, unfamiliar country and its people. Then she meets handsome, fiercely independent hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford), and a hesitant romance ensues.
