DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Sony Piictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 10, 2025

As is often the case, the central issue with Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is a matter of perspective. That is also, however, the key strength of writer/director Embeth Davidtz's debut movie. There might be something to take from that inherent contradiction of storytelling, but this straightforward tale of a family in Zimbabwe, called Rhodesia or Southern Rhodesia in its colonial past, only interrogates any kind of dichotomy here in, well, a straightforward way.

The story is set in 1980, when the country was referred to as Zimbabwe Rhodesia in the year or so before independence, and revolves around a family of European farmers. More specifically, the narrative is focused almost exclusively on the point of view of Bobo (Lexi Venter), the youngest surviving daughter of that family. She is under the age of 10 and, obviously, sees and interprets everything—even the complexities of politics, race, civil strife, and all that comes with this story—through the eyes of a child.

Davidtz's screenplay is based on the memoir by Alexandra Fuller, who was an adult, of course, when she wrote her book. That adds another layer of contradiction here, because the story intrinsically doesn't belong to a child. Instead, it's an adult filtering memories and imagining what the world must have looked like at that age. Arguably, the movie is too much aware of its other characters and the political situation happening within this country at the time to truly exist within a child's perspective, so the limitations of the narrative, excused by the fact that it is a young girl telling this story, sometimes come across as disingenuous.

It's one thing to be ignorant and relate matters from that point of view. It's another to plead ignorance but display enough knowledge that the narrative gaps feel intentional.

Davidtz's script and direction are always walking that line, and the movie is most effective when it stays with Bobo. Her life seems a dream for any kid who enjoys the outdoors and adventure, as Bobo clearly does—playing with the farm's assorted animals, riding her motorbike around the countryside, demanding that any adult in her vicinity tell her some kind of tale.

Her own parents, Nicola (Davidtz) and Tim (Rob Van Vuuren), aren't ones to pay much attention to their kids. Tim is in the military, regularly called off for patrols and escort jobs, since there still is a presence of guerilla fighters in the country—even with a ceasefire agreement with the current government and an upcoming election that will be decided upon by the entire population. Meanwhile, Nicola is terrified that the election might go the way of one of the leaders of the rebellion. Uncertain of what will happen to the farm if that occurs, she drinks a lot and keep an automatic rifle with her at all times—even while she sleeps.

The movie's political viewpoint is confusing, to say the least. Since the story does mostly revolve around Bobo, it doesn't offer much detail. In passing, the girl sees news reports about killings of European locals and hears about the election on the radio, and she sums up her understanding of the situation succinctly in one bit of the near-constant voice-over narration.

The country "belonged" to Europeans for some amount of time, but then, some of the native inhabitants, whom she simply calls "Africans," said the country originally belonged to them. After that, everyone in Bobo's circle started calling the Africans "terrorists." There's some wisdom in that simply stated account—in the way perspective really does matter, especially when it comes to how one group of people can quickly turn another into "others" by way of language.

Jarringly, the narrative doesn't always stick to Bobo or her way of thinking. Most notably, those shifts come from the characters of Sarah (Zikhona Bali) and Jacob (Fumani Shilubana), Black servants on the farm, who basically have the entirety of the local political situation place on their shoulders in this story. Sarah is close to Bobo—telling her stories, cleaning and tending to the girl when she becomes too dirty from her constant play, walking with her hand-in-hand.

On the other hand, Jacob sees a lot of the girl's parents in her, especially when Bobo plays with some of the farmworkers' children and almost reflexively makes the Black boys servants to her. Jacob warns Sarah that there are eyes on the farm in the hills, and whatever the observers might be planning, they will also see Sarah with the girl and might consider her a "collaborator." There are a few shots of the disembodied perspective of the people in the hills, and for all of the movie's supposed disconnect from conflict and politics, those moments have a sinister quality to them.

The shorter point, perhaps, is that the movie mostly succeeds as a coming-of-age story about a girl whose worldview is defined by her ignorance and how she unknowingly—for worse and better—follows the examples of the adults around her. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, however, is also about bigger and more specific ideas of this time and place. Yes, the purpose of it is to show our protagonist as a naïve observer of those things, but that aim is ultimately undercut by the fact that movie does—and probably should—know better than that, too.

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