Le Carré novel blooms on screen"The Constant Gardener" takes viewers on a breathtaking trip into a maze of intrigue in Africa.

Simply the best adaptation of any John le Carré thriller to make it to the screen, The Constant Gardener - with Ralph Fiennes as a British diplomat and Rachel Weisz as his leftist, activist wife - brings a much-needed dose of intelligence and intrigue to the late-summer movie lineup.

Set mainly in Kenya, where the contrast between the few haves and the vast number of have-nots is severe, the film is both suspenseful and dazzlingly beautiful - not in a misty, pretty, languid way, but in jumpy bursts of color and ragged splendor. Directed by Fernando Meirelles, the Oscar-nominated Brazilian whose doclike City of God explored the squalid maze of Rio's gang-ridden barrios with adrenalized artistry, The Constant Gardener captures the shantytowns of Nairobi and other-worldly landscapes of the Kenyan outback with head-turning breathlessness.

It's as though the viewer is literally along for the ride: gazing from the passenger seat as the four-wheel-drive vehicles rumble down rocky roads past rusted tin roofs glinting in the sunset, past the straw and mud tribal homes, past wild country and wilder life.

The life of Justin Quayle (Fiennes), on the other hand, is anything but wild. A career foreign service bureaucrat, he is the gardener of the title: methodical, mild-mannered, resigned to his midlevel postings on the postcolonial map of the long-disassembled British Empire.

Tessa (Weisz) is his opposite: forthright, passionate, unafraid to cause a ruckus at an embassy cocktail party by speaking her mind. It is giving nothing away (it happens in the first chapter of the book, and the first minutes of the film) to say that Tessa is believed to have been killed. The bodies of a white woman and an African doctor have been found on the side of the road in the northernmost Kenyan frontier. The Constant Gardener, then, is a swirl of flashbacks and time-shifts: Tessa as Justin remembers her, their first meeting in London, their marriage, their arguments, his fears.

There are suspicions that she was having an affair; her openness could be mistaken for flirtatiousness, her interest in people as something amorous, illicit. In the wake of Tessa's disappearance, Justin sets out to piece together the puzzle of her life - and death. Fueled by regret and remorse but also by a quiet rage, the tepid diplomat draws on some hidden strength, embarking on a quest to get to the bottom of his wife's murder.

In a way, he is getting to know the woman he married for the first time. And he is determined to put the rumors about her to rest.

Fiennes, whose tight-lipped reticence hasn't always worked in his favor, is ideally suited, as is Weisz, an actress able to convey braininess and recklessness in equal measure. The supporting cast, from Hubert Koundé, who plays Tessa's doctor friend, to Bill Nighy as a haughty foreign office higher-up, to Pete Postlethwaite in a small but memorably ferocious turn, is uniformly strong. Danny Huston might not have been the perfect choice to play Sandy Woodrow, Justin's immediate boss, but he gets the job (slippery, duplicitous) done.

The Constant Gardener, which tackles the of-the-minute topics of African exploitation by the West, of international pharmaceutical companies and government corruption, doesn't take storytelling shortcuts, doesn't dumb things down. Meirelles respects his source material - le Carré's book - as well as its audience. And the filmmaker's assurance and vision in reimagining the novel are downright inspiring.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5829 or srea@phillynews.com.

Produced by Simon Channing-Williams, directed by Fernando Meirelles, written by Jeffrey Caine, from the novel by John le Carré, cinematography by César Charlone, music by Alberto Iglesias, distributed by Focus Features.

Running time: 2 hours, 9 mins.

Justin Quayle. . . Ralph Fiennes

Tessa. . . Rachel Weisz

Sandy. . . Danny Huston

Marcus Lorbeer. . . Pete Postlethwaite

Arnold Bluhm. . . Hubert Koundé

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, nudity, adult themes)

Playing at: area theaters

Movie Review

The Constant Gardener

(**** out of 4 stars) Starts today at area theaters.

Read Steven Rea's interview with John le Carré at http://go.philly.com/

constantgardener.