Diractors is an ongoing series in which Hassle writer Jack Draper examines films, new and old, whose directors are better known for their work in front of the camera.

Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight presents an interesting case: a unique attempt by a diractor to adapt someone else’s memoir. In my mind, a memoir isn’t necessarily made for cinematic adaptation, or maybe better fit for documentary. Alexandra Fuller’s memoir isn’t screaming to be made into a movie either, as the story is rather novelistic. Holding true to the actual experience of one family as your first movie is a tall order when balanced with with being a respectful and honest filmmaker looking at the text. The text is a story of white South Africans during an Apartheid; the filmmaker is character actress Embeth Davidtz.  

Davidtz’s parents are South African, making her well suited for a topic as sticky as this. Audiences are more aware than ever of the risks that come with a white woman making a movie about confronting colonialism, plus a tumultuous election and stringing together a decent coming of age story. I think this is the best achievement of the movie, as the film is viewed from the perspective of eight-year-old Bobo Fuller (Lexi Venter), whose life on her prejudiced parents’ farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) is coming under threat during the 1980 national election between Robert Mugabe and Bishop Abel Muzorewa. During Bobo’s endless summer she not only comes to question whether her parents are racist, she also confronts her own bigotry, all without the guidance of her parents to direct where systemic racism sprouts from. Even though the continuation of upheld racist structures is an interesting one to interrogate through the white family at the center.  

I had a high school English teacher who once said that “every story is about the loss of innocence,” and Dogs is a proud addition to this thesis. As Bobo does see things she does understand or has a knack for interpreting what she calls home from the narration, which does get a little cute. She only loses her innocence from also witnessing her mom Nicola, played by Davidtz (my favorite part of the movie), who’s filled with a constant need to defend. Alcoholic and paranoid, she’s haunted by the native Africans coming to kill her family. This feeling of ownership comes from her right to keep claim to her land as well as the privilege to assimilate. Which to me, the most accomplishes the minimal amount, feeling like someone describing a book they enjoy rather than letting us live in it. Davidtz is superb as an actress, but I admire that something so personal even though she seems out of her depth to give this some panache.  

But Davidtz trying her hand at directing as she approaches her 60s is clever. As there’s no clear rush to direct while you’re still in you prime as an actor, it’s as though she’s felt that directing isn’t just doing it to try it out. It’s this personal connection of being a proud South African that gives her the ability to stand out among the rest of diractors that go on to be nonexistent. Or, this can live on as that time Ms. Honey from Matilda directed a daring movie. Even though fellow diractor Danny DeVito directed her to the most famous part of her career, she quietly had a very powerful ’90s, working with Sam Raimi, Steven Spielberg and Robert Altman as well as stately productions of Jane Austen (Mansfield Park) and Merchant Ivory (Feast of July). With Mad Men also being a standout, she’s never the biggest name nor the first name on the call sheet but a sturdy and reliable presence in movies.  Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight is successful in showing that this is a story from a white person that wasn’t being told with half-assed effort but because it was resonated with.  

Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight 
2025
dir. Embeth Davidtz
110 min.

Now playing @ Coolidge Corner Theatre