Ralph Fiennes in Constant Gardener- News

10-01-04 Photo from Moreilles, Diary of Ralph Fiennes shooting his own camera work for The Constant Gardener.

Touchy Topic for Kenya-Based Film
07-16-04 -allAfrica.com

By Storm Stanley, Nairobi

On a cold, drizzly day in July, a film crew is bustling about at a house in a Nairobi suburb making a film adaptation of John le Carr's novel, The Constant Gardener.

A scene from The Constant Gardener, which is being shot in Kenya.

It is the set for Scene 39, where Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) and Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston) arrive at Quayle and Tessa's (Justin's wife's) house to find it has been ransacked.

We know from early on that a nefarious pharmaceutical company is responsible, but le Carr is able to ingest the story with an element of suspense to move the plot forward, just the same as, no doubt, the film will too.

Christine Blundell, the make-up artist (she won an Oscar award for Topsy Turvey) is checking Fiennes' short-back-and-sides haircut for the fifth time. Fiennes, dressed in a crushed tweed jacket and wearing brogues, is looking every bit the part of le Carr's invented First Secretary from Nairobi's British High Commission.

I have been talking to Liz Miller, the PR consultant for Focus Features (the production company). Fiennes and Huston re-enter the house so that director of photography C sar Charlone can film the same scene from a different angle. A few minutes later, we hear "Cut!", and resume our conversation.

Liz has been telling me about the impressions the international cast and crew have of Nairobi. "We have all been warmly treated by everyone, and we feel privileged to be here. We shot for three days in the Kibera slums and the plight of the residents is profoundly sobering.

"We have all probably been changed by this experience, Tracey Seaward, the co-producer reiterates."

Brazilian Director Fernando Mierelles received an Oscar nomination for his first real-life film, City of God, in which he wove poverty, armed children and drug gangs in a housing estate in Brazil into the story of an aspiring photographer.

In The Constant Gardener, Mierelles tackles another Third World issue: A pharmaceutical company has been testing an unstable new drug on them - with lethal consequences. I spoke to Mierelles during his brief lunch break.

Is the film a faithful visualisation of the novel?

Well, it's the same story, the same characters. But I think the film is more contemporary. And we have added a few more Kenyan characters.

What made you do this particular film?

Well, first of all it is about the pharmaceutical industry; this is a big issue in Brazil. We're producing generic brands for Aids and several other diseases, and in the last four to five years there has been a great deal of tension between Brazil and the US government because of that. The drug industry is really powerful; I think they have the most powerful lobby in the US. I have been reading about it for years, and doing the film is a good opportunity to reveal some things.

Shooting in Kenya was the second thing. I came to Kenya last September because I am preparing another film, part of which will be shot here, and so it was a chance to see the country again.

And finally, this is a big budget film for my standards. I am directing for an independent film company, and I have a say about the final cut. I wouldn't have this if I was working for a big studio. I felt I could do the film that I wanted.

The novel presents a very polemic version of medical research. Might the film not give the wrong message? In Nigeria the polio vaccination programme has been stopped - because of rumours that the Americans are intent on making Africans sterile - and polio is now spreading again throughout West Africa?

"No, no, no. The film has nothing to do with this. In The Constant Gardener, drug companies are testing their drugs in Africa because it is much cheaper. When problems occur they can hide them; no one sues them. This story happened; it is based on a true story in Nigeria. When I talked to le Carr, he told me that if they want to bring a new drug onto the market now, they never go directly to the people. They negotiate via the government and strike a deal.

What do you think of the moral in the novel, considering first Tessa is murdered and then Justin - with no one brought to book for their deaths. Is this simply a case of victory for the giant pharmaceutical industry in collusion with corrupt politicians or do you have another spin on the story?

No, in the end nothing really changes. There is one character who is exposed in the foreign office in London, but it is like life: they just replace the company in Kenya and carry on doing what they have always been doing.

Le Carr's novel mixes fact and fiction, and presents a damning indictment of the global pharmaceutical industry. I wondered if there was another side to the story, and spoke to Bob Snow at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, who readily admitted that there are dubious practices going on in the industry, but pointed out too that there are global pharmaceutical companies conducting trials in the developing world Africa using good clinical practice (GCP), and it would be "a shame if all global pharmaceutical research were to be tarred with the brush of the Constant Gardener.

"I am sure that there are unethical drug trials taking place, with under-the-table type deals, but these days this is more likely to be the exception than the rule." Snow added that the groundswell of ethical concern is not because of le Carr 's book, but simply a coincidence that he wrote a book about the global pharmaceutical industry at the same time that the protocol of good clinical practice became the norm!

The Constant Gardener is not due for release until sometime next year, but to whet your appetite, I recommend City of God, Mierelles' debut film. It is difficult to watch, but compelling viewing, available on video from your local library.

A Brazilian let loose in the British world of Le Carré
06-11-04 -The Telegraph

John Hiscock goes on the set of the surprising new venture from the 'City of God' director

Immaculately dressed in a pin-stripe suit, blue shirt and tie, Bill Nighy strides authoritatively across the smoking room at the National Liberal Club, talking in clipped, upper-class tones to an attentive Ralph Fiennes at his side.

The take goes faultlessly and, while crew members scurry to set up the next scene, Nighy takes the opportunity to pull up a chair in the club's River Room and assess his surroundings. Floor-to-ceiling windows open out on to a long balcony with magnificent views of the Thames, and oil paintings line the walls of the 125-year-old club's high-ceilinged rooms.

The actors and crew have moved in for a week to film scenes for The Constant Gardener, the £15 million film based on John Le Carré's novel of murder and intrigue in Africa. They will then move on to Kenya for eight weeks.

Fiennes plays Justin Quayle, a mild-mannered British diplomat who surprises his colleagues by embarking on a personal odyssey to find the truth surrounding the murder of his socially conscious but adulterous wife, played by Rachel Weisz. Nighy is Sir Bernard Pellegrin, a Foreign Office mandarin with special responsibility for Africa.

After being cast as mentally fragile and battered individuals in films such as Still Crazy, I Capture the Castle and Love Actually, Nighy takes great satisfaction in portraying what he calls "a nobby toff".

"I don't come from that background at all, so it's very nice to be playing an upper-middle-class Englishman," laughs the 55-year-old actor who, after 30 years of stage, small-film and television work, is suddenly near the top of filmmakers' want-lists.

His years of hard-won experience allow him to shun the weeks of rehearsal and instead step straight into a role. He only arrived on The Constant Gardener set the day before, having come straight from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in which he plays Slartiblartfast, the man, he explains with a grin, who designed the world, winning an award for the fjords of Norway. "I came in yesterday, shook hands with the director and started acting," he recalls. "I'm still here today, so I must have the job."

It is not Bill Nighy's first role in a Le Carré thriller. In 1983, he had a bit part in The Little Drummer Girl when the theatre company of which he was a member was hired to play themselves.

Nighy talks drolly, with a self-deprecation that probably comes from years in the acting trenches, but The Constant Gardener's director, Brazilian Fernando Meirelles, is more enthusiastic about his talents.

"Bill arrived yesterday, we met for 20 minutes and he did his scenes perfectly," he says. "I am very fortunate, I have a wonderful cast."

It is Meirelles' first film in English and he took over from Mike Newell, who left when he was offered Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. Meirelles comes to The Constant Gardener from City Of God, the Portuguese language film about drug dealers in a Brazilian slum that won more than 25 awards globally and received four Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Director. Following its success, Meirelles received 64 offers from Hollywood, but instead opted to cut his English language teeth on the lower-budgeted British film.

An engaging, bespectacled 48-year-old with a slightly rumpled look, Meirelles is wrestling with the intricacies of the English language while struggling to understand the ways of British diplomats. "The difficult thing for me is the English," he says frankly. "I speak bad English and some things in the script sometimes I just don't get. The actors are helping me and they are very patient with me. I feel very bad because I think I am more intelligent than I can express in English." In fact, his English is much better than he says and he has imposed his own vision on screenwriter Jeffrey Caine's adaptation of Le Carré's novel. Meirelles has jettisoned many of the references to the structure of English society that, he confesses, he didn't understand, and has focused more on Kenya and the ruthlessness of the corporate world in Africa.

"Fernando has brought a vision of Africa to the project," says the producer, Simon Channing Williams, whose credits include Secrets and Lies and De-lovely, and who obtained the rights to The Constant Gardener three and a half years ago.

"Until Fernando came on board, it was mainly about an enclave of English middle-class diplomats living in a colony in Africa," he says. "It was very much done from the British point of view, but Fernando has refocused it and has cast 17 Kenyan actors."

The villain of the piece is a multinational drug company that fatally uses Africans as guinea pigs to test a tuberculosis remedy. Tessa Quayle is killed when she is discovered compiling data against the company.

Meirelles and Caine have reshaped the structure, beginning not with the death of Tessa, as Le Carré does, but when she is pregnant and living in Africa with her husband. Her murder does not occur until a third of the way into the film and she continues to appear in flashbacks.

To balance the darkness of the story, Meirelles has included an explicit love scene between Fiennes and Weisz, which he has already filmed and in which Fiennes, he says, performed admirably.

The only problem has been filming in London. "It's been an absolute nightmare," Channing Williams says bluntly. "London is not film friendly. Ken Livingstone has said he would like to make it easier to film here and I hope he does, but, at the moment, it is harder than any other city in the world. Dear old Britain is still in the colonial age."

LOOKING FIENNES IN A SUIT
Ralph blends in to smart Wharf crowd
05-27-04

By Allison Martin

Ralph Fiennes blended in with besuited Wharf commuters this week as he filmed at the Jubilee Line Tube station.

The suave star of Schindler's List and The Avengers, was at the Cathedral of Commuting on Tuesday (May 25) to film scenes for the big screen adaptation of John Le Carre's novel The Constant Gardener.

In the film - due for release next year - Fiennes, 41, plays Kenya-based English diplomat Justin Quayle who investigates the mysterious death of his wife, and a man he suspects of being her lover, against the wishes of the British High Commission in Nairobi.

Ralph told The Wharf he was looking forward to filming in Kenya as the cast and crew are due to head off to Africa in June for three months. But he was slightly less enthusiastic about his time filming at Canary Wharf.

"It's going to be a long day," he smiled.

The film also features Runaway Jury and The Mummy star Rachel Weisz as Tessa Quayle, Fiennes' murdered wife in the story.

The last Le Carre novel to hit the big screen was The Tailor of Panama, released in 2001, which starred Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush.

Ralph's younger brother Joseph, star of Shakespeare In Love and Enemy At The Gates, filmed scenes for Killing Me Softly with Austin Powers stunner Heather Graham, at the Jubilee Line Station in January 2001.

The last blockbuster to film at the Jubilee Line was Hugh Grant and Colin Firth romantic comedy Love Actually.

Firth filmed scenes on the Wharf last year.

A Fiennes Time
Ralph set to film at Jubilee Line station

05-06-04

By Allison Martin

Ralph Fiennes will bring a little intrigue to the Canary Wharf's Jubilee Line station this month.

The Schindler's List star will drop into the Cathedral of Commuting at the end of May to film scenes for the big screen adaptation of John Le Carre's novel The Constant Gardener.

In the film due for release next year Fiennes, 41, plays Kenya-based English diplomat Justin Quayle who investigates the mysterious death of his wife and a human rights activist who he suspects is her lover.

The film also features Rachel Weisz, star of The Mummy and About A Boy and Anthony La Paglia, who stars in C4's gritty FBI drama Without A Trace and will soon be seen alongside Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal in mobster comedy Analyze That.

A London Underground spokesperson said: "The date hasn't been set yet but he will be filming The Constant Gardener here at the end of May."

The last Le Carre novel to hit the big screen was The Tailor of Panama, released in 2001, which starred Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush.

Ralph Fiennes to star in film set in Kenya
03-26-04- BusinessWorld Online

The Oasis Lodge and its German proprietor so impressed British novelist John Le Carre that he used their real names in his 2000 book The Constant Gardener.

In Kenya, where the Le Carre's tale was set, the book was sold under the counter because it spun a web of deadly conspiracy between international pharmaceutical manufacturers and authorities in the east African country.

The book is now being adapted for the silver screen by Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Mierelles (City of God) with Ralph Fiennes in the lead role.

Much of it will be shot on location in the Oasis Lodge, which lies on the edge of a desert on the shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

The terrain is unusual, as is its proprietor, Wolfgang Deschler, whom Le Carre thanked in an author's note at the end of the The Constant Gardener.

Deschler first turned up here in 1981 and now lives in the almost empty hotel in the company of about- 30 employees from the local Samburu ethnic group.

Twenty years ago, the Oasis Lodge was the place to be, judging by the photos on the restaurant walls.

"We were fully booked. I had to sell beds around the swimming pools. We had stars like Mick Jagger, Lauren Hutton, Iman, fashion photographers and their models, film people too," the hotelier recalled, cradling a beer.

"It was like that until 1991 and the first Gulf war, which brought things to a halt. We don't see tourists now because of bombings and travel warnings against Kenya," he said.

"Bah, now I'm retired," the mustachioed 53-year-old added with a smile.

He conducts most of his converstations by radio: none of his neighbors live closer than 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.

When he needs to travel to Nairobi, he flies himself in his own plane.

But the Oasis Lodge is still open for business and a hot stream still feeds the pool, a welcome sight for newcomers dusty after a gruelling drive.

There was a big party recently. "There was a cricket match with all the local Kenya Cowboys," said Deschler, using the slightly derogatory term for the country's white citizens.

The match was played in Kalacha, another oasis a day's drive away, but just a hop by plane, the Cowboys' favoured mode of transport.

"Everyone came back here afterward for a black tie diner," he enthused.

In a few months, the place will begin to fill up again when shooting begins on the film.

"They've said 150 people will come. I don't have enough bungalows but they are bringing everything by plane," explained Deschler.

"If someone told me I'd end up living here, I wouldn't have believed them. I was a city-dweller. I liked going out at night. Now, when the cook tells me the freezer is empty, I go on the lake and fish a few kilos of Nile perch," he laughed.

Weisz Joins 'Constant Gardener'
02-14-04 -The Movie Insider

Rachel Weisz has landed the female lead opposite Ralph Fiennes in The Constant Gardener, an adaptation of the John le Carre novel for Focus Features. Oscar-nominated helmer Fernando Meirelles (City of God) directs, with shooting to begin in May.

Weisz will play the feisty wife to Fiennes' complacent British diplomat. While he seems most interested in tending his garden in Nairobi, she uses her law degree to expose a scandal in which a drug company is testing a dangerous tuberculosis remedy on a group of poor Africans. When her battered body is discovered in the jungle, her husband is driven to discover her killer and uncover possible collusion between politicians and a pharmaceutical giant.

The role of Tessa Quayle had young actresses jumping, partly because the film marks the English-lingo debut of the director. Meirelles recently was quoted in Gotham papers lamenting that he had to choose among Weisz, Kate Winslet and newcomer Eva Green, who just toplined Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers.

Weisz is shooting Constantine opposite Keanu Reeves and the upcoming Barry Levinson-directed comedy Envy.

Meirelles To Helm LeCarre's The Constant Gardener
11-12-03 -Variety

Master Spy novelist John LeCarre's (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) newest release "The Constant Gardener" was set to be directed by Mike Newell, but due to "Harry Potter" commitments, the feature is now set to be helmed by "City Of God" Director Fernando Meirelles. "The Constant Gardener" tales the story of a Brittish Diplomat in AIDS torn Kenya as protagonist Justin Quayle, to be played by Ralph Fiennes, uncovers a conspiracy between the country's government and a major pharmaceutical company as they try to promote their "wonder cure" against turbeculosis. Oh yeah, and Justin Quayle's wife is murdered along with the man she is suspected of having an affair with. Jeffery Caine (Goldeneye) penned this screenplay. A March shooting date is set for this Focus Features release. This will be Meirelles' first english feature and by the sound of it, it's bound to be a good one.

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