The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener film is about a love story set against a conspiracy of power and dirty deeds. In London, Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) meets and falls in love with outspoken leftist Tessa (Rachel Weisz) a beautiful young activist who persuades him to take her back with him to Africa. Quayle, a shy, low-rung British diplomat and horticultural hobbyist posted in Kenya, is one to avoid making a fuss until he learns that his wife was found dead on the veldt. Tessa has been murdered at a crossroads, along with her African driver. Her colleague, a doctor named Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Kounde), is initially suspected of her murder, but is later revealed to also have been murdered on the same day as Tessa. Various rumours abound that the two were having an affair, however it is later revealed that Bluhm is, in fact, homosexual. As the mystery surrounding his wife's death unfolds, the quiet and self-effacing Quayle is radicalised in his determination to get to the bottom of his wife's murder. He is soon running up against a drug corporation exercising its power to both ignore the easily treated diseases of the third world and use Africa's "disposable" population for unofficial research and development. Pete Postlethwaite is Lorbeer, a weather-beaten drug company man who works in the field – at what, it is dangerous to say. Danny Huston plays Sandy Woodrow, the British high commissioner on the scene. Bill Nighy is Sir Bernard Pellegrin, head of the Foreign Office, and thus Justin and Sandy's boss.