A moment ago I looked up the proper spelling of this film’s title, and it was only then that I realized it won the Oscar for best foreign language film this year.

That’s not really a surprise. This gorgeously shot picture has a fresh perspective on the second World War: rather than being set in the cold, desolate ghettos most recently recalled by The Piano, the Jewish characters in Nowhere in Africa make their home on the bright, sunny land of Kenya.

The film is just as much about the marriage of the lead characters, which undergoes tremendous stress. It’s a fascinating to watch lead actress Juliane Köhler as Jettel, the woman who first treats the “Negroes” as the help, even as her peers are being rounded up in her homeland. Jettel, like her daughter and husband, is deeply affected by her situation, a fact brought into relief whenever a letter comes from Germany with “the stamp that always brings tears.”

Husband Walter has strong ideas about what it means to be German, and his unbending stance leads one to question how much of being a citizen is about birth and how much is about will.

Gorgeous, and good.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2003 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Film.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.