I finally caught "The Constant Gardener" last weekend, and while it isn't the best film I have seen this year, it is still a very good one, with excellent performances from all. Unfortunately, I was not able to catch every line of dialogue, due to rather poor volume control in the theatre's sound system. Nevertheless, this did not keep me from enjoying the film as a whole.

This is the latest adaptation of a John Le Carré novel, and Le Carré, famous for writing modern classic spy novels like "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold", does not write fast-moving novels with lots of action and gunplay. His plots evolve slowly and realistically.

The story opens with what seems like an accidental death -- and no, I am not spoiling anything by giving this away. Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz), the beautiful, hot-headed activist wife of diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) has been killed in a horrific jeep accident in Kenya, where both are stationed. It soon becomes apparent to the once rather withdrawn and complacent Justin, who begins his own investigation into the death, that Tessa may have been murdered for prying into areas that most people there felt she should not have looked into. Tessa, who administered to seriously ill patients, had noticed that several of them were being given an experimental drug that was supposed to be a cure for TB - even though most of the patients did not have this disease, and her prying may have cost Tessa her own life. A further complication includes the suspicion that Tessa may have been having an affair with a co-worker.

After a long series of flashbacks, in which we see Tessa and Justin's relationship evolving, we finally get to the main body of the story, in which Justin seems to discover one duplicitous act after another the more he investigates, accompanied by death threats from unknown sources.

Ralph Fiennes, as Justin, gives a brilliant performance. I normally find him very resistable and too remote no matter how good he is, but here his remoteness works very well for the character. Rachel Weisz, whom most of you may have seen in the latest batch of "Mummy" films, here gets to show her real acting range, instead of being simply a damsel in distress. The other actors, among them Danny Huston (John's son) and Pete Postlethwaite. are also effective in smaller roles.

The film is directed by Fernando Meirelles, who is best known in the U.S. for his foreign films, but he certainly has no problem with an English language best seller. His use of colors and bleached-out whites is also striking, especially when he shows the colorful fabrics that the natives wear.

I would not be surprised if this film does get several Oscar nominations, especially for Fiennes and Weicz. If you are in the mood for an intelligently written thriller, full of twists and turns without gunplay, "The Constant Gardener" may be exactly the film you'd like to see.