Chronicles of Love and Pain

No such difficulties have beset the German entry, Nowhere in Africa, which has the advantage of being about the Jewish experience in World War II. For what it is — a grand, old-fashioned weepie with great scenery — the movie also stands on its merits. Based on an autobiographical novel by German journalist Stefanie Zweig, Nowhere in Africa tells of a well-heeled secular-Jewish family from the town of Breslau who manage to escape to Kenya in 1938, just under the wire of Kristallnacht. Inevitably they learn to love the place, but only after gargantuan struggles with poverty and farm life, and wartime internment — as German nationals — by the British. Shot on location in Kenya, the movie (told from the point of view of the young daughter, Regina, played as a child by Lea Kurka and as a teenager by Karoline Eckertz) narrowly skirts the gaga travelogue mentality — the landscapes! the noble natives! — that commonly afflicts such efforts. It is very good indeed on the discreet disdain of British anti-Semitism, as experienced by Regina at a snotty English school in Nairobi, and even better on the deracination of Jews who escaped Europe in time, only to suffer the agony of not knowing what became of their families. But the movie's real strength lies in its intelligent, sympathetic account of the dynamic, difficult marriage of Regina's parents, an idealistic lawyer (played by Georgian actor Merab Ninidze) and his spoiled bourgeoise of a wife (played by the ethereal Juliane Köhler, last seen as a spoiled bourgeoise in Aimée & Jaguar), who spends her last pennies before leaving Germany on a slinky evening gown, and doesn't take easily to slumming in the veldt. It goes without saying that both wife and gown will find new uses that will prove to be the making of them, just as it goes without saying that this likable drama, which rocks no boats and topped the movie charts in Germany last year, is practically a shoo-in for an Academy Award.

DIVINE INTERVENTION | Written and directed by ELIA SULEIMAN Produced by HUMBERT BALSAN and SULEIMAN | Released by Avatar Films | At Laemmle's Music Hall and Laemmle's Playhouse 7

NOWHERE IN AFRICA | Written and directed by CAROLINE LINK Based on the novel by STEFANIE ZWEIG | Produced by PETER HERRMANN | Released by Zeitgeist Films | At selected theaters