Sept 23 1988 

GORILLAS IN THE MIST opens. Directed by Michael Apted  from a screenplay by Anna Hamilton Phelan. Sigourney Weaver is Dian Fossey, an American primatologist and conservationist who spent some 20 years (1966-1985) in the jungles of Congo and Rwanda studying mountain gorilla groups. More hagiography than biography insomuch as it demurs to offer any substantially subterranean insights into Fossey’s purported psychological unravelling, Weaver, nevertheless, still manages to find the odd dark crevice in Anna  Hamiton’s Phelan’s script, and her scenes with the magnificent primates more than compensate for an incongruous sub-plot devoted to her brief romance with Bryan Brown’s National Geographic photographer. Shot on location in Africa in 70mm.

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