Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: Ferociously memorable

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for violent/bloody images, profanity, sexual assault and underage smoking and drinking

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.20.25 

Films this powerful don’t come along very often.

 

Director/scripter Embeth Davidtz’s boldly unflinching drama is adapted from Alexandra Fuller’s award-winning 2001 memoir, which depicts the author’s childhood in white-controlled Rhodesia, before and after that country’s 1980 independence and re-christening as Zimbabwe.

 

Sarah (Zikhona Bali), the family housekeeper, is the only adult who takes any interest
in young Bobo (Lexi Venter), who has become an almost uncontrollable feral child.

At first blush, Davidtz seems an unlikely choice as filmmaker; she’s best known as the accomplished actress who delivered memorable performances in Schindler’s List, Junebug, Mansfield Park and television shows such as Mad Men and Ray Donovan. As it happens, though, at age 8 the American-born Davidtz moved with her South African parents to Pretoria in the early 1970s, where she grew up confronted by that country’s institutional racism.

It's not hard to understand what drove her to this material.

 

Her film gets its quiet, skin-crawling intensity from the casual indifference with which its “superior” characters of privilege — or power — turn a blind eye to casual, systemic cruelty. In that respect, Davidtz’s film deserves pride of place alongside classics such as Schindler’s List and The Zone of Interest, although this one is even more disturbing because of its child’s-eye perspective.

 

The story’s primary character — she cannot possibly be termed a “heroine” — is 7-year-old Bobo Fuller (Lexi Venter, simply amazing), who lives on a family farm on the outskirts of Umtali, with her teenage older sister Vanessa (Anina Hope Reed) and their parents, Tim (Rob Van Vuuren) and Nicola (Davidtz). Three dogs are a constant presence.

 

It’s a dangerous time, days away from a presidential election between Robert Mugabe, favored by Black Africans, and the Western-educated Bishop Abel Muzorewa, viewed by his countrymen as a puppet controlled by the minority white population. Unrest has turned violent, with members of both races being slaughtered (although radio and TV coverage focuses on white victims).

 

The girls are warned never to enter their parents’ bedroom at night, because they sleep with loaded guns.

 

To say that Bobo runs wild is an understatement. She’s a completely unsupervised feral child: perpetually grimy and smelly, often dressed in the same ragged shorts and a gray T-shirt with the slogan “Come to Umtali and get bombed,” which is a) tasteless for somebody her age; and b) laced with an unsettling double meaning.

 

She often roars through a nearby village on a dirt bike, rifle slung over one shoulder, taunting the Black children to chase her. She parrots racist beliefs — “Black people have no last names” — not because she understands how hateful they are, or even what they mean, but simply because that’s what she hears her parents and their friends say.

 

She steals the pretty small rocks from ceremonial gravesites and, when challenged, lies about it. She also smokes — constantly — ignoring her parents’ half-hearted insistence that she stop.

 

Bobo is as one with the worst of the regressive children in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.”

 

Davidtz and cinematographer Willie Nel miss no opportunity to emphasize the little girl’s begrimed face and dirty bare feet. (“I wanted the close-up on the filthy fingernails,” Davidtz admitted, during a recent Los Angeles Times interview.)

 

All this said, Bobo isn’t really at fault, since she hasn’t been raised to any degree; she simply stumbles from one moment to the next. Her father often is absent for days, involved with some sort of unsettling local white militia; Bobo helps load his weapons, prior to such excursions. Her mother, a policewoman, gets blind drunk every night.

 

Every time her father leaves, Bobo watches him approach his vehicle through scrunched, barely open eyes, willing him to turn around and glance at her one more time, perhaps with a farewell smile or wave: an impressive point-of-view shot by Nel, as if his camera looks through the girl’s eyelashes.

 

Bobo’s closest exposure to parenting comes from housekeeper Sarah (Zikhona Bali), one of the family’s two Black servants; Jacob (Fumani N Shilubana) handles larger farm chores. Sarah genuinely cares for the little girl, despite being appalled by her behavior; Bobo, in turn, enjoys and values Sarah’s company.

 

Bobo loves to hear the African stories Sarah tells, and requests them repeatedly; the young woman obliges, often with a resigned, weary smile. Sarah also offers guidance, at times, hoping that Bobo might benefit.

 

“The ancestors gave us the things we need,” Sarah sagely observes, at one point, “not always the things we ask for.”

 

But this relationship is dangerous; being seen behaving nicely to a white person — even a little girl — could put a target on Sarah’s back.

 

This isn’t an idle threat. Nel’s camera occasionally follows Sarah’s gaze toward the nearby forested hills, where a sudden bright lens flare reveals an observer. The nighttime stillness of the Fuller home often is viewed through somebody’s binoculars. Nel’s kid’s-eye-level tracking shots further emphasize an unsettling atmosphere of ... something... that becomes increasingly unbearable.

 

Indeed, Nicola can’t bear it. In a shattering performance certain to earn an Oscar nomination, Davidtz progressively crumbles before our eyes. Worry and resignation battle with anger and defiance; she acts out by dressing provocatively and flirting with other men when she, Tim and their white neighbors gather at the local ramshackle bar.

 

Nicola’s racism isn’t casual; she clearly loathes all Black Africans, and endures Sarah and Jacob solely because having servants is a status symbol. When Bobo spots a dangerous snake in the kitchen, Nicola blows it away with her assault rifle, then orders Sarah to clean up the mess ... and then bring her some tea.

 

Fully aware of the way the election is destined to go, Davidtz’s eyes blaze as Nicola repeatedly shrieks her defiance; she never will leave “her” land. She takes odd pleasure in crushing a blood-filled tick with a bare heel.

 

Tim seems somewhat decent, in a hands-off sort of way. Van Vuuren imbues the man with patience and a silently affable nature (although we’ve no doubt he’d casually kill somebody he believed deserved it). He certainly isn’t an overtly boorish pig, like many of their friends.

 

Reed’s performance is quietly heartbreaking. Vanessa has just reached the age of sexual awareness, and being concerned about her appearance: development milestones taking place in the worst possible environment.

 

Both Bali and Shilubana radiate stoic pride and regality, laced with taut wariness; Sarah and Jacob know that one wrong word or move, no matter how seemingly innocent, could prompt a swift, nasty rebuke. Or worse. 

 

The performance that Davidtz coaxes from young Venter, however, is stunning. The acting newcomer, 7 years old when this film was made, isn’t the slightest bit “performative.” She’s wholly natural as Bobo: untrained, unsophisticated and impressionable. 

 

It’s as if Venter gets up each morning and lives the part. Not once does it feel like she’s reading memorized lines, and her expressive little face — always partly concealed behind long and uncombed hair — speaks volumes. Her stream-of-consciousness voiceovers also feel like a little girl’s thoughts, questions and desires.

 

We’re captivated ... even while horrified by Bobo.

 

Chris Letcher’s thoughtful, often disconcerting score is supplemented by Zimbabwe Catholic Shona songs, a hit by the Zimbabwean psych rock band Wells Fargo, singer Roger Whittaker’s “New World in the Morning” and many others.

Davidtz clearly planned, fine-tuned and flawlessly executed every aspect of this film, which — given world and national events — arrives at precisely the right moment. You’ll not soon forget it.