The Constant Gardener

Fernando Meireilles, UK, 2005, 129 minutes

As befits the director who delivered the slums of Rio to the world, The Constant Gardener is filled with compelling images of poverty. The camera lingers in close-up on ragged children and open sewers, and where City of God was filled with jump cuts, The Constant Gardener forces us to look at what are undoubtedly real shanty towns. Despite the fact that this is a big budget thriller, The Constant Gardener feels much more 'Unreported World' than 'National Geographic Special Presentation.' The part of Kenya in which the action takes place is so poor that it proves a paradise for the most unscrupulous of drug companies, as Pete Postlethwaite's wayward missionary tells us "big name pharmaceuticals are right up there with the arms dealers". Despite the theme of activism and investigation that drives the plot, this film still feels wrapped around the line uttered by diplomat Sir Bernard Pellegrin (Bill Nighy) "lots of nasty things live under rocks, especially in foreign gardens". Even though Nighy plays Pellegrin as slightly camp but nonetheless sinister (is there any other kind of diplomat?), his words describe how we make films about Africa in the West.

Africa is still seen very much as a foreign garden, but now that garden is subject to a different kind of protection. Now we want to protect Africa from ourselves. Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) begins the story as a low-level diplomat to the British High Commission in Kenya. Giving a lecture in London on the idea of diplomacy, he is accused of "being paid to apologise" by Tessa (Rachel Wiesz). Their antagonistic meeting dissolves into mutual attraction, which swiftly becomes a whirlwind romance. Tessa asks Justin to take her to Africa, and he agrees. Heavily pregnant and now married, Tessa becomes the firebrand of the diplomatic community in Kenya, using her considerable charm to fearlessly accuse the heads of major drug companies who conduct trials without consent on poor Africans. When she and her colleague Arnold produce a report, she persuades another diplomat Sandy (Danny Huston at his oily, predatory best) to send it to London, through the official channels in the hope that it will receive attention. What it does instead is ensure that Tessa is under surveillance. When she and Arnold fail to return from a trip up country, their tortured bodies are soon discovered. Suspicion mounts as rumours circulate about Tessa's infidelity, and the true nature of her work.

Ralph Fiennes as Justin, Danny Huston as Sandy, Hubert Kounde as Tessa's colleague and co-investigator Arnold, are all excellent, but it is Wiesz who steals the movie as the mercurial, fearless Tessa. This is an ambitious film and Meireilles, as someone who has been catapulted from the realms of third world, independent cinema into the realm of the blockbuster Hollywood thriller deserves to be congratulated for managing to somehow retain something of his integrity. The Constant Gardener is a superb thriller, inventively shot and sufficiently stimulating in terms of its issues and characterisation to provoke plenty of post-cinema conversation.

Review by Sarah Artt
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2006