A number of years ago, a Swiss woman holidaying in Kenya was bewitched by a Masai warrior. It was little more than love, or perhaps intrigue, at first sight but the occasion was enough to make her abandon her boyfriend and decide to stay. So enraptured was she by this striking man, that she followed him to his remote village and got married. Naturally, her family in Switzerland were unable to grasp such radical behaviour, an attitude that made the woman even more determined to see out her plan. Despite the odds, the couple built a life, had a child and opened a small store. Yet things didn’t run smoothly – he was a jealous man and her foreign ways divided the couple, and eventually, the community.

Adapting Corrine Hofman’s autobiography, director Huntgeburth builds an intriguing epic of personal sacrifice and determination as only African stories can be. There’s a gentle, fluid style that, punctuated with moments of joy, grief, pleasure and pain, builds a finely textured experience. Striking cinematography underlines the emotional resonance without resorting to excessive moments of travelogue - parading elephants, that sort of thing. Yet as this most unusual tale appears to build toward a definitive conclusion, it dissolves into something altogether less weighty than it richly deserves. When Hofman returned to the village some years after the events of this film, she was met with a dismissive air of indifference and found her former husband had remarried several times. Life, it seems, goes on. Omitted from the film, this sad footnote would have given the narrative final punctuation it sorely needs.

// COLIN FRASER