Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight review - vivid adaptation of a memoir about a Rhodesian childhood

Fans of Alexandra Fuller’s fine memoir of her childhood in Africa may be wary of this film adaptation by the actress Embeth Davidtz, her directing debut. But they should not be. This is an equally fine, sensitive rendering of Fuller’s story, with a miraculous performance by seven-year-old Lexi Venter at its heart.

The setting is Rhodesia as it evolves into Zimbabwe after the Bush War ends and, in 1980, the socialist Zanu PF leader, Robert Mugabe, is elected prime minister. The Fullers have a cattle farm near Umtali in the east, near the Mozambique border. They and the other local whites live a no-frills life, punctuated by visits to their lacklustre Club. It’s a world where deadly snakes can appear in the kitchen and mysterious lights flash out of the nearby trees, a sign of the lingering presence of hostile forces. 

The author, nicknamed Bobo, who was actually about 10 at the time, is our guide and narrator, a high-octane hoyden with a head of matted dark blonde hair and a fearless love of her home. She putters about on a motorbike or rolls in the dust with her beloved dogs while her mother (Davidtz) drinks heavily and her father is frequently away. Smoking is her secret hobby, but her main concern is an attack by terrorists, a fear inculcated by her parents, along with a sense of Africans as being radically “other”. She’s intrigued by them, though, and clearly adores Sarah, the family’s black housekeeper.

Sarah (Zikhona Bali, pictured right) seems to be modelled on Violet, one of the real maids Fuller grew up with. She’s stern but loving, as amused by young Bobo as we are, even as she tries to rein in her wildness. Through the relationship between them, we see all that is askew about the country’s racial divide. Bobo is an echo chamber for her parents’ views, which are those of the self-defined entitled. She hasn’t yet learned to distance herself from this form of racism, which she disingenuously parrots. Sarah tolerates her playing the “boss”, but you sense she is privately unamused.

Bobo also has a curiosity that takes her beyond the parameters of the white farmer’s world, to the graveyard in the forest, or to the little camp where black squatters have arrived: when her mother arrives on horseback and screams at them to get off her land, Bobo is quick to yell back at her, ferociously, to stop.

Davidtz, who was raised in South Africa from the age of nine, plays Mrs Fuller with total commitment: always teetering on the brink of manic depression but with unexpected reserves of strength and quirks of character born of long acquaintance with her challenging homeland. She sleeps cradling an Uzi, and her despatching of a snake in the kitchen with it is especially impressive. “Her” farm, "her" heritage, are her obsession, yet she stands out from the other whites as an exotic creature, sensual and daring (she often goes out and about commando, apparently), whereas they are lumpen and narrow-minded. Her husband Tim (Rob van Vuuren, pictured below with Davidtz), on the other hand, is a wiry, sunbeaten man of few words. 

Davidtz doesn’t attempt to include all the details of the Fullers’ lives from the book – and sensibly ends the film halfway through it, with the family packed up and leaving for Malawi. She also gives them slightly more agency than the real Fullers had: in her script Tim sells their farm, whereas in reality it was appropriated for a small sum and given to black farmers by the new land redistribution programme.

One key event looms large: the death of Bobo's younger sister, three-year-old Olivia, an angelic ash-blonde child with a fascination for ducks. Her older sister Vanessa (Anina Reed) also pets them like kittens, taking chicks to bed with her. Bobo had been put in charge of Olivia on the day of her death and is still tormented with guilt at what happened. There is a huge need for love in her, though she is mostly a sunny, carefree child, full of mischief. Venter amply conveys this with every roll of her big brown eyes and her gap-toothed smile, one tombstone of a front tooth suggesting her slow advance into maturity. She seems connected to an unseen energy supply at all times.We see the family is capable of great joy as well as sorrow, as in the exhilarating scene where the sisters sing along, word perfect, to Chris de Burgh’s “Patricia the Stripper”, Bobo bursting through the Land Rover’s window with open arms, as if embracing the sky. On the other hand, she witnesses the suffering of local Black men at the hands of the police, locked away for torture and abuse. In one extraordinary scene she stares through the slot of a cell into total darkness – until suddenly the whites of the prisoner’s eyes emerge, staring back at her. 

Davidtz keeps these bravura moments to a minimum. This is essentially a vivid, evocative portrait of a hard way of life, of dusty vistas and dogs gnawing on rotting bones (provenance unknown) while an ironic counterpoint is supplied by the soundtrack, a jukebox of lush 1980s ballads, many of them by Roger Whittaker. The Fuller famiiy’s love of Africa is both obvious and, with hindsight, misdirected; they are usurpers as well as (temporary) keepers of the land, nurturing its resources while exploiting  its indigenous people. It’s a tension judiciously kept in balance by Davidtz’s script.

• More film reviews on theartsdesk