'Gardener' 1st bloom of fall
3 1/2 stars
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
With Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston.
Director: Fernando Meirelles (2:09).
R: Language, violent images, sexuality/nudity.

 Espionage novelist nonpareil John le Carré has had adaptations of his books brought to the screen by some of the best directors of their generations.

Among them: Martin Ritt ("The Spy Who Came in From the Cold"); George Roy Hill ("The Little Drummer Girl"); Sidney Lumet ("The Deadly Affair"); and John Boorman ("The Tailor of Panama").

But none has done le Carré the justice he receives from Brazil's Fernando Meirelles on his 2000 novel "The Constant Gardener."

Meirelles, who received international acclaim and four Oscar nominations for his gritty 2002 Brazilian drama "City of God," makes the transition to big-budget Hollywood filmmaking with ease. "The Constant Gardener" is a slick, fast-paced production with first-rate performances and an emotional punch you won't soon forget.

Set in Kenya, it stars Ralph Fiennes as the seasoned and unambitious British diplomat Justin Quayle and Rachel Weisz as his vivacious and doomed wife, Tessa.

At the very beginning of the film, Justin receives the news that his wife and her driver were murdered after being run off the road while returning from a visit to a northern village. At the same time, his boss (Danny Huston) tells him that Tessa had apparently spent the night with her Kenyan traveling companion, Dr. Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Koundé).

Most of the first half of the film is devoted to flashbacks about Justin and Tessa's meeting, courtship and life together in Nairobi, where she busies herself working for women's rights and against corporate exploitation of Kenyans while he tends his prized garden.

The second half picks up after he has learned of her death and apparent betrayal, and follows his journey from the garden into the tangle of corruption that led to her murder and that will lead him to her killers.

It takes some time to adjust to the switch in genres from romantic drama to political thriller, but it's a minor speed bump as Meirelles quickly gears the story up and gets it back in the fast lane.

The plot has to do with Tessa's investigation of a drug that is being provided by an international pharmaceutical company for Kenyans stricken by a tuberculosis epidemic. The drug's lethal side effects are kept secret while the firm collects a fortune off it.

How close Tessa has come to exposing the scheme, and Justin's determination to finish the job for her, are the links connecting the first and second halves of the movie.

Fiennes and Weisz are perfectly cast as attracted opposites. Forgiving their meet-cute scene, in which Tessa interrupts a speech being given by Justin with a rash of accusatory questions about British foreign policy, there is some rich chemistry between them.

In his previous films, Fiennes seemed to be an actor working behind an invisible emotional screen. You could believe his intensity in films like "The English Patient" and "The End of the Affair," but not his passion. Here, he is emotionally open and completely convincing.

Weisz, as ever, is lit from within - she's all energy and intellectual radiance. Tessa has to learn to dampen her political passions, especially around Justin and his colleagues at the British High Commission, but Weisz doesn't let us forget that they are there and reaching a dangerous boil.

Given the mostly amateur cast Meirelles worked with on "City of God," he does an extraordinary job with these pros, and he could not have picked better Kenyan locations. The rust-colored beach where Tessa died and where Justin's quest will end could be from another - and hostile - planet.

"The Constant Gardener" opens before Labor Day, the official start of the fall movie season, but if it's a harbinger of things to come, goodbye and good riddance to summer.

 

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