‘Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight’ review: A memoir with bite

The bracing period drama “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” humanizes a childhood that sounds easy to hate. It’s 1980 and 7-year-old Bobo Fuller (an astonishing Lexi Venter) is running wild around her parents’ farm in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, an awkward temporary name for a civil war-stricken country holding its breath for an election that will decide its future. Most Black Africans are rallying behind Robert Mugabe, who promises to return the land to them. Bobo’s white immigrant family backs his Western-educated opponent Bishop Abel Muzorewa. “He’s not like a real African,” Bobo explains, a guileless child repeating the adults she’s overheard.

Bobo’s father and mother are on edge. Tim (Rob Van Vuuren) is in a mysterious militia. Nicola, played like a taut violin string by Embeth Davidtz (who also directed and adapted this story from Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of the same name), sleeps cradling an assault rifle. The Fullers don’t have money but they do have local servants, Sarah (Zikhona Bali) and Jacob (Fumani Shilubana), and a surplus of bullets, brandy and entitlement. To set the tone, an early sequence has a hungover Nicola machine-gunning a snake in the kitchen, then ordering the help to clean up the blood. “Sorry about the mess,” she says blithely. “Bring me my tea, please.”

Civilians on both sides of the conflict are getting violently murdered, although you’ll notice that the news in Bobo’s earshot is more concerned with the white victims. We stay in the girl’s perspective: mornings taunting the Shona kids to give chase as she dirt-bikes past their camp with a rifle on her shoulder, afternoons heedlessly desecrating their ceremonial graves and midnights where she’s terrified to go to the bathroom lest she get shot by home invaders or her trigger-happy folks. Davidtz was in grade school when her own family moved from New Jersey to apartheid-era South Africa. “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” isn’t her biography, but she understands.

As in the book, Bobo’s take on things is blunt and chipper and usually wrong; we’re entrusted to read between the lines. (I snorted at her definition of “terrorist.”) In the ignorance of a child, we glimpse the conviction of settlers who insist, as Nicola does, that they’ll fight for this territory with their bare hands. For contrast, there’s also Bobo’s sensitive older sister, Vanessa (Anina Reed), who hangs ABBA posters on her walls and wears trendy print dresses, clearly yearning to go through puberty somewhere far away from here.

The pull of the film lies in how Davidtz allows Bobo to bob on the surface of things while we feel the dark undertow. The truth is there in the baleful eyes of the figures who don’t get to speak, especially the bloodied prisoners handcuffed to the stair railing at the police station where her mother works. And the confusion is there too, like when Shilubana’s formidable Jacob proudly raises a Black Power fist and the girl raises hers back, or when boisterous men run up to her car window with a chicken. Are they mocking her? Or is it a friendly game?

Fuller’s personal history was mostly interested in capturing her unusual youth. It’s absolutely worth a read, given her family’s quirky esprit de corps even when they had nothing to eat but impala. Mugabe’s election hangs over everything but barely gets a direct mention. This fictionalized version is more politically curious to the point of teetering on false. Bobo pesters the grown-ups with tons of pushy questions. Nicola gives limp answers.

“Are we African?” It’s complicated.

“Are we racist?” Certainly not.

“What sort of people are we?” We have breeding.

That haughty last reply, which actually comes from Bobo’s grandmother (Judy Ditchfield), is doubly ironic delivered to Venter’s dirt-smeared, cigarette-smoking hooligan. The girl is so filthy that just one look at her gets across the idea that this lifestyle is repellent. Bobo belongs in the pantheon of filmland’s savage moppets next to “Aliens’” Newt and “The Road Warrior’s” Feral Kid. Those roles have become iconic, and yet first-time actor Venter runs circles around them. It’s a minor miracle that Davidtz put this young performer — with her missing teeth and natural ease — in front of the lens, and a major one that Venter can deliver reams of her character’s inner narration with pitch-perfect conviction. Only 7 herself at the time of filming, she has none of those trite child-actor tics like over-mannered naivete or phony cheek. She even pulls off lines that should be clangers: “I really hope we don’t die in a land mine today.”

Davidtz gets great mileage out of watching Bobo tramp around ordering Sarah to fix her something to eat. (Wiping her nose, she couldn’t be snottier.) Sarah — whose real name was Violet — is a minor character in the book. Here she’s been promoted to its conscience and Bali does masterful work layering politeness over irritation over a germ of affection for this disastrously neglected little girl.

In turn, the script loves Sarah fiercely and fears for her safety. Doting on this brat is dangerous; a public hug would put a target on Sarah’s back. There are people watching the Fuller house from the hills. The camerawork, by Willie Nel, uses horror-movie tropes to keep us on edge: stalkerish POVs framed by binoculars, eerie tracking shots that pad around like a spy. The gimmicks are effective, though a bit of a feint.

Davidtz deploys a tad more dramatic theatrics than she needs. One plot point is underscored by clanging church bells that definitely don’t exist on this empty stretch of land. But the film does boast a great soundtrack with tracks by the Zimbabwean psych rock band Wells Fargo and the Kenyan-born crooner Roger Whittaker, as well as the Scottish bagpipe music that Nicola puts on to relax. (No, really.)

As Nicola, Davidtz hurls herself into a hot-blooded, scenery-chomping performance in which her cheekbones and nerves get harsher as the film goes on. Nicola refuses to leave her property, though we struggle to see why she wants to stay. Her adamancy is meant to feel unjustifiable (although she enjoys crushing ticks with her bare feet). Still, there’s a telling line toward the end that she delivers in a scream — a reason that makes sense even as it defies logic — and a shot of her galloping on a horse where she looks genuinely at ease. In that image alone, you believe Nicola’s connection to this land.

Even if you despise the Fullers on principle, “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is an enthralling watch. There’s outrage underneath every offhand remark and heartbreak in watching this fraying community turn on each other. The sovereign state of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia will only exist for a matter of months. The lives of this family and millions of others are balanced on that flimsy hyphen. It’s so obviously insufficient, and so obviously doomed.