Nowhere in Africa is a 2001 film from Germany directed by Caroline Link.
The film is set 1938-1947 and centers on the Redlich family, German Jews. Walter and Jettel Redlich and their daughter Regina flee Nazi Germany in the nick of time, just a few months before the Kristallnacht pogrom. They have escaped Germany with their lives, landing in Africa in the British colony of Kenya, but matters remain difficult. Formerly members of the upper class, they are now living a hardscrabble existence in a farmhouse without electricity or running water, as Walter struggles to make it as an employee of a British colonialist rancher. Jettel is unhappy on the African savanna, missing the good life back in Silesia. And both of them miss their family members, Jews left behind in Hitler's Germany. While little Regina takes to life in Africa with ease, Walter and Jettel's marriage begins to fray.
Based on an "autobiographical novel" by Stefanie Zweig, a German Jew who fled to Kenya as a child with her parents in 1938.
Tropes:
- Age Cut: Regina is dropped off from boarding school. Owuor picks her up and twirls her—and she's suddenly at least three years older, and is played by a different actress in her early teens.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Regina and by extension, her family. At least her parents understand why, but for her, the endless ostracization she suffers from white people is confusing.
- Ambiguous Situation: Is Jettel having an affair with the sergeant because she wants Walter out of the camp or because she's lonely and sad and he's the first person to show her any affection? Or maybe both?
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Walter clearly feels indebted to Owuor for taking care of him when he had malaria.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Both Walters and Owuor have peculiar conversations from time to time, with either speaking their native languages, yet understanding the other - and even casually changing languages mid-sentence. Of course, all three men know Swahili and over time, Owour does learn enough German to get by with Jettel.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Redlichs eventually leave Africa and return to what will soon become West Germany, where Walter will be a judge. Jettel and Walter have reconciled and she is pregnant (and Regina says in the ending narration that Jettel had a baby boy). But they still mourn their lost relatives, and Regina in particular is broken-hearted about leaving Owuor.
- Boarding School: Regina is send to one, for purely practical reasons - after all, she's living "nowhere, in Africa". She still regularly comes back home during holidays and school breaks
- Captain Obvious: Used for dramatic effect for once. Much to her frustration, the elderly German lady (implied to have been there since the times of Deutsch-Westafrika and yet having to suffer the consequences of being a German citizen anyway) has to point out to the intermed Jewish women that they can actually use that for their case, rather than constantly grumbling about "unfair" treatment by the British.
- Children Are Innocent:
- Regina, at least as a little girl, is completely clueless about her predictment as a Jewish girl in Germany, so she does things like keep track of Führer's birthday or ask why papa can no longer be a lawyer. At the same time, she is devoid of any sort of judgmental attitude
- The young boy, back in Germany, sincerely asking Jettel if she needs help, since it's only natural for him to help someone who fell on the ground - while wearing an armband with a swastika on it.
- City Mouse: The Redlichs in general, Jettel in particular. While it is understandable that Walter won't be that great as a farmhand, being a lawyer by trade, Jettel completely refuses to accept the reality of her situation even when already in rural, colonial Kenya.
- Cultural Posturing: Jettel sees nothing wrong with bossing around Kenyans, treating them like worse and demanding from them to speak German or not talk at all. The film gets entire mileage out of a Jewish woman behaving like this in the midst of World War II and while she eventually does get better, it takes quite a while to get there.
- Culture Clash: The Kikuyu people see nothing wrong in Dying Alone. There is also the strict division of male and female labour, with the entire village making fun of Owuor after Jettel made him carry the water supply for her.
- Dead Sparks: The marriage of Walter and Jettel goes through this phase - twice.
- Emasculated Cuckold: Walter feels this way after Jettel slept her way to his release from the internment camp and their reassignment to a new farm.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Teen Regina obviously no longer has Girlish Pigtails.
- The Film of the Book: A Compressed Adaptation of Nowhere in Africa: An Autobiographical Novel by Stefanie Zweig, a 1995 German bestseller, along with changing slightly various character backgrounds.
- Fish out of Water:
- Jettel arrives at the train station in Nairobi wearing a fashionable European-style dress. She looks around to see a lot of black people dressed in Kenyan garb. She continues this way for a long time, refusing to learn the Kikuyu or at least Swahili language, still wearing impractical dresses, at one point freaking out and demanding to go back.
- The English boarding school isn't all bad (the headmaster gives her a Charles Dickens book and calls her "Little Nell"—but Regina feels like an outsider as a Jewish girl. When it's time at assembly for the students to say the Christian prayer, the small smattering of Jewish kids have to get up and stand against the side wall.
- Five Stages of Grief: Jettel goes through it during the film: first she's in denial about the prolonged stay in Kenya, then she's angry over it, then she bargains to get out, then she gets sad, and by the time she finally accepts the place, the war is over and she's heading back to Germany.
- Foreshadowing: Susskind mentions that he always fell for women who were already taken. Take a wild guess with whom Jettel ends up having an affair.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak:
- Regina, especially in her teens. She shows all sorts of stereotypically feminine behaviour and tastes, but still ends up growing up on a farm in rural Kenya, which by default requires her to also handle herself in very unladylike ways and to be very practical - right down to seeing nothing wrong with getting naked when needed, despite knowing how taboo it is for a white girl.
- Jettel, her mother, when she finally decides to make the best of being stuck in Kenya and having to run the farm on her own after Walter enlists and is sent to Burma. She would still rather attend cocktail parties, mind you, but she learns how to be an effective overseer.
- Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: Played for drama. When the war is over and Walter returns home, it finally sinks in for both him and Jettel what they truly managed to escape by fleeing Germany in early 1938. Then end up in bed, having passionate sex.
- Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: The film manages to examine both ends of the trope with Jettel. She's having an affair with Susskind, because she can't wrap her head around why her husband would evacuate the entire family to a god-forsaken place, denying her all the luxuries she is used to and then not bending to her demands - and this is portrayed as at least questionable, but definitely selfish behaviour. Then she's having an affair with a British sergeant, to get Walter out of the internment camp, essentially trading sex for favours directly needed to help her own husband and maybe getting some fun for herself, but still with a noble goal in mind.
- Great Offscreen War: World War II is going on, and Kenya is even being used as a staging ground for attacking Italian East Africa, but it's all far and away. Deliberately so - Walter's entire plan was to get as far away as possible from any potential dangers.
- Handsome Lech: The British sergeant, who is making steady advances towards Jettel.
- The Horseshoe Effect: The film doesn't pull punches when pointing out antisemitism and racism aren't uniquely Nazi or even German sentiments. Jettel takes it to an even higher level, being a Jewish woman in the middle of The Holocaust, bossing around a black man and openly treating him with racist contempt - all while he's the only help she can get. Then there are the casually antisemitic Britons, who see nothing wrong with looking down at the Redlich, while being busy fighting a war with Nazi Germany.
- I Choose to Stay: At the beginning of the film Walter's father Max refuses at the last moment to leave with Jettel, believing that in "a year or two" the Nazi fever will pass. It proves to be a tragic error, as Walter eventually learns his father was beaten to death by Nazi goons.
- Jerkass:
- Jettel is quite harsh to people, for no real reason, while also being a very temperamental person.
- The school principal, who is a nasty piece of work just because he can get away with it.
- Know When to Fold 'Em:
- Walter packed for Africa a month after he lost his job as a lawyer and got his wife and daughter to join him by early 1938, before things in Germany started to escalate (Anschluss happens when Jettel is already on board of a ship and Kristallnacht didn't happen until the 9th November that year).
- The other Walter, Susskind, left in 1933, right after the Nazis got into power. This let him keep all of his possessions and travel freely, rather than being under the various limitations and seizures that affected the Redlichs.
- Language Barrier: Walter's initially doesn't speak Swahili. Owuor doesn't speak German. They still have "conversations" while Walter is being nursed back to health after having malaria - and he uses that time to learn Swahili. This is in stark contrast to Jettel, who demands from Owuor to either speak German or not speak at all.
- Lawful Stupid: Walter, Jettel, and Regina are Jews who have fled Nazi Germany—but when war breaks out in September 1939, they are interned as "enemy aliens". (This happened in Real Life to German Jews in Britain and throughout the British Empire.)
- Match Cut: An overhead tracking shot showing the dry savanna of Kenya whooshing away beneath the camera cuts to a shot of the wake of a ship at sea, as Jettel and Regina journey to Africa to reunite with Walter.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: After local elders make a sacrifice to Ngai, there is rain the same day, despite a severe drought going on for weeks.
- Mood Whiplash:
- The warm and happy reunion of the family when Jettel and Regina arrive in Kenya is spoiled after a few minutes when Walter's Jerkass boss, the British rancher, barges in and screams at him for not digging a water well. He then lays down another bit of obnoxiousness by muttering "Bloody refugees" as he leaves.
- The teasing, sexy National Geographic Nudity moment (see below) between Walter and Jettel turns very ugly on a dime after he makes a veiled accusation about her infidelity.
- The Mountains of Illinois: The opening scene in Leobschütz is trying to invoke the generic "alpine Germany" look - while the town lies in a flat plain and the city park in which the scene is supposed to be taking place is not only full of deciduous trees, but also famous for its elaborate fountains - with no hills in sight. The scenes were filmed in downtown Munich.
- Mundane Luxury:
- In the opening, Walter sends a letter to Jettel, instructing her to, by any means, pack a fridge into their crates, and if she has to leave anything to make room, it should be the Rosenthal porcelain. She doesn't listen, leading to both short- and long-term problems.
- Later, Walter gets Jettel undressed by playfully promising her a roasted chicken for dinner.
- Narrator: Bits of narration from Regina scattered throughout. In the opening she reflects how after leaving for Africa she could barely remember Germany, except for the memory of being afraid.
- National Geographic Nudity:
- A plot point. Walter and Jettel, recently released from internment, see some Kenyan women walking by topless, carrying their burdens atop their heads. Walter dares Jettel to take her top off and walk like the native women do, and she does. Then out of nowhere he turns nasty and asks if she made any "friends" while interned. It turns out that he knows about the British officer she had sex with.
- Discussed again a little later, when a post-puberty Regina says her African boy friend (boyfriend?) can't see her breasts anymore, and he asks why not, since the women in the village show theirs. After explaining the supposed differences, she still ends up undressing her blouse without any issues, simply to not get it dirty as they climb the nearby tree, clearly not believing in the "prim and proper" cultural norm she's been taught.
- National Stereotypes: Brits get this treatment, with their inedible cuisine, stiff attitude and silly sports.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Jettel, a refugee from persecution, treats the Kenyan locals in a pretty racist manner. Walter says this explicitly when he notes that she treats their cook Owuor just like some people back in Germany that she wouldn't want to be compared with.
- Ojou Ringlets: Little Regina, at least very early on, along with big ribbons - both to indicate her wealthy origins and how out-of-touch her mother is when they arrive to Kenya.
- One-Steve Limit: Subverted. There is Walter Redlich, Regina's father, and Walter Susskind, their expat neighbour in Kenya.
- Orbital Kiss: An orbital kiss shot of Walter and Jettel after she finally arrives at the ranch in Kenya after a long time apart. Their reunion gets more rocky after that.
- Properly Paranoid: Both Walters. Notably, nobody takes them serious when they plan to "escape" Germany while it is still possible, and Jettel even considers her own husband's plan to run away as far as Kenya to be downright silly. Sure, why not somewhere else in Europe, but Africa?
- Riches to Rags: To an extent. Regina's family was a well-to-do upper-middle-class Jewish family who ended up as tenant farmers in the middle of the Kenyan wilderness. While Walter tries to adjust, it takes Jettel forever to stop acting like she's still going to attend a ball the next weekend.
- Sex for Services: Jettel has sex with a German-speaking British guard in order to get her husband released from internment. It works in that Walter is released, but backfires when he finds out.
- Skewed Priorities: Jettel would rather bring an entire crate of luxury china and clothes for high-class parties than bring an icebox, despite moving to the Kenyan wilderness and being explicitly instructed to get a fridge with herself. This is her Establishing Character Moment.
- Token Black Friend:
- Owuor, the Kenyan cook, who seems to have little else to do besides look after Walter and Jettel and babysit Regina, is one to the whole family. When the Redlichs are released from internment, but wind up getting sent to a different farm quite a bit away from their first one, Owuor walks miles across the dry Kenyan savanna just so he can return the pet dog and continue serving the family. In one scene he tells Jettel that he has three wives and a whole bunch of children, but spends most of his time looking after Jettel and Regina rather than his own family because "white women are helpless."
- Jogona, the boy Regina befriends, seems to be the only local kid that befriends her and sticks around with her over the years. Up to even having Unresolved Sexual Tension when they are in their teens.
- Truth in Television: Using quinine is dangerous to your eyesight, especially when it's applied as a preventive and to a child.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Jettel ends up being chewed out for this a few times by different people, including by her own husband, until she finally moves past her Holier Than Thou, bossy attitude.
- Unishment: The "enemy alien" German women and children are rounded up and put into confinement—in a four-star Nairobi hotel, apparently because there's nowhere else readily available. Jettel, who was living in a rustic farm house and eating eggs and vegetables, rather enjoys being interned.
- Voiceover Letter: Walter's voiceover accompanies a worried letter that he types out to his father Max after hearing of Kristallnacht. In 1940, Max's voiceover accompanies a very ominous letter in which he reports that things have gotten worse and the Nazis have closed the borders and are no longer letting Jews out. Then there's a very short and even scarier one in early 1943, when Jettel's mother writes in only 19 words (out of 20 allowed) that she and Jettel's sister are being to Poland "to work".
