A Dream of Africa, Indeed

Hollywood movies about Africa are available in both high- and low-culture varieties, and its refined, literary title alone signals that “I Dreamed of Africa” does not want to make common cause with the likes of “Africa Screams,” “Africa--Texas Style!” and “Tarzan and the Slave Girl.” Perish the thought.

Rather, director Hugh Hudson has constructed a reverential, forbiddingly genteel epic that makes as high-tone a film as “Out of Africa” play like “Zulu Dawn.” This is a Laura Ashley on Safari meditation on bored rich people searching for fulfillment and a new life among the photogenic wildlife of Kenya. Just wake me when it’s over.

“I Dreamed of Africa” is based on the memoir of the same name by a privileged Italian woman named Kuki Gallmann (regally played by Kim Basinger), who in reality doubtless led a very fulfilling life with her young son and new husband on a 100,000-acre cattle ranch called Ol Ari Nyiro.

But director Hudson (whose last adventure in Africa was the none too thrilling “Greystoke”) and screenwriters Paula Milne and Susan Shilliday have, except for its uncharacteristic closing episode, leeched all the inherent excitement out of the situation. What’s been substituted is reverence and awe, making for a film whose tone is so hushed it feels like it’s been shot in a church. This is not so much bad as stodgy and emotionally uninvolving.

Basinger looks majestically beautiful as Kuki, a woman who apparently ages not at all (that African climate must be great for the skin), though her son grows so much that two actors are needed to play him. It’s understandable why Basinger chose “I Dreamed of Africa” as her first part since winning a well-deserved Oscar for “L.A. Confidential,” but it’s still kind of a shame.

After a career doing solid work in not always memorable films, Basinger may have wanted to use her Academy Award clout to at last get a Meryl Streep-type role, to do something that positively reeked of class. While this may be her dream, as Africa was Kuki Gallmann’s, the reality is that, as opposed to her wonderful performance in “L.A. Confidential”--where she really was a star--here she’s simply acting the way she thinks a star should act.

Kuki is introduced as an aristocratic divorced mother in her native Italy, one of a group of posh high-society types who top off a Venetian night at the opera with a nightcap at Harry’s Bar. In a trice, however, tragedy strikes, and Kuki simultaneously almost loses her life and gains a handsome and devoted admirer in Paolo (French actor Vincent Perez).

Not only is Paolo great with Kuki’s young son, Emanuele (Liam Aiken), he shares with her both a restlessness and a fascination with Africa, a place her father always talked about and where he himself lived when he was younger. The suddenness of the potential move worries Kuki’s mother (Eva Marie Saint), but Kuki has the perfect modern rationalization for her decision. “I’ve stopped growing,” she says in complete seriousness, and no one has a comeback to that.

Kenya, the new family’s destination, looks in Bernard Lutic’s cinematography as beautiful as everyone hoped it would, and soon enough they settle into the African colonial-style equivalent of a fixer-upper, complete with devoted servants who conveniently happen to live in the neighborhood.

While Kuki keeps saying things like “I’ve never felt so alive” as her blond hair blows in the wind, life on the ground is a bit more than she anticipated. For one thing, husband Paolo begins spending most of his time drinking Scotch and hunting with his layabout pals in an I’ll-never-grow-up evasion of responsibility. “Out there, there is just the moment, I need that,” he whines to Kuki, and while she accepts this as the male equivalent of “I’ve stopped growing,” audiences may be less tolerant of these self-centered antics.

Because Paolo is always gone, Kuki is forced to become increasingly self-reliant. Soon she is chasing off elephants, dealing with marauding lions, even palavering with local dignitaries in fluent Swahili. “I am surrounded by Africa,” she says, turning into a veritable Mother Courage of the Great Rift Valley. “I am surrounded by life.”

While, absent an investigation by Hurricane Carter’s disaffected lawyers, one can presume all of this happened, that doesn’t make it especially believable. Hudson’s terribly earnest style robs everything of its reality, and immediately following a scene of a house nearly toppled by fierce winds with its miraculous repair doesn’t help.

With lines like “Why does love cost us so much?,” what we are left with is a “woman’s plight” romantic fantasy for the bored and comfortable. The very things Kuki was looking for in Africa--adventure, emotional connection, the taste of life--are missing from the film about her. While “I Dreamed of Africa” does take a more serious turn in its final section, it’s too late to do anything but discombobulate whatever portion of the audience has managed to remain awake.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for a scene of nudity/sensuality and some violent/traumatic episodes. Times guidelines: It’s all extremely genteel.

‘I Dreamed of Africa’

Kim Basinger: Kuki Gallmann

Vincent Perez: Paolo Gallmann

Eva Marie Saint: Franca

Liam Aiken: Emanuele, age 7

Lance Reddick: Simon

Garrett Strommen: Emanuele, age 17

A Jaffilms production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Hugh Hudson. Producers Stanley R. Jaffe, Allyn Stewart. Screenplay Paula Milne and Susan Shilliday, based on the book by Kuki Gallmann. Cinematographer Bernard Lutic. Editor Scott Thomas. Costumes Shirley Russell. Music Maurice Jarre. Production design Andrew Sanders. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes.

In general release.