Still Dreaming of Africa
13
Africa are simply not dealt with.”10 For Erin Oke, using Africa as a substitute for
Kenya, where the film actually takes place, . . smacks of the imperialist mind
set that set up Africa as the ‘dark continent’ in the first place and then set out to
colonise and ‘civilise’ it.” Oke continues, “The Gallmanns mostly hang out with
and [sic] endless series of big game hunting, private plane-flying white folk and
send their son off to a British-run prep school where he can learn to play
cricket.” 11 Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that “Kenya, the new
family’s destination, looks in Bernard Lutic’s cinematography as beautiful as
everyone hoped it would be, 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.”12 Winston Ntshona (he
previously played Gordon Ngubene, the South African black gardener whose son
is killed in,4 Dry White Season [1989]), has the only real African-speaking role as
a sunglasses-wearing chief who says how much he has learned from European
missionaries. Or from Haro-online.com/movies: “There are only small vignettes
on African life in a slow moving film where little happens.. . . Also, although the
film takes place a matter of decades ago, everything looks like it came out of the
earlier part of the century. If Teddy Roosevelt passed in the background on
safari, it would be completely believable. The lack of Africans (hey, it is Africa
after all) is also strange.”13 Kim Basinger does not help with lines such as: “I am
surrounded by Africa. I am surrounded by life.” Or such witticisms as “I am at
peace.” “I am alone.” “He is my son. He is my friend.” Basinger “delivers most
of her lines in a sedate drone,” writes Brenda Sokolowski, “that’s supposed to
convey bliss, although one wonders whether she got her paws on a stash of
Valium