Way Out in Africa WHITE MISCHIEF

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

The characters in White Mischief behave as if they were suffering from a slight but unshakable fever. In some victims the chief symptom is a languid indifference to conventional morality. In others the illness manifests itself in a restless pursuit of the usual home remedies for boredom: drugs, alcohol and, of course, outrageous sex. You could blame this malaise on Kenya's equatorial weather -- bound to have a curious effect on the dank blue blood of English aristocrats. More likely, though, the idle colonial social climate, circa 1940-41, is doing them in. With too much time on their hands, and not enough money in their purses, these stranded idlers have to fill the endless days and nights on the cheap.

Besides, in the 20 years between the World Wars, decadence had become something of a tradition in these parts, as James Fox made clear in the soberly investigative 1983 book from which this deliriously erotic movie has been adapted. The author set out to investigate the murder, never officially solved, of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, Kenya's most notorious womanizer (played in the film by a subtly predatory Charles Dance). Fox concluded that the murderer was Sir John Henry ("Jock") Delves Broughton (Joss Ackland), a man phlegmatically devoted to squandering a fortune. Broughton's motive was jealousy. It seems that Diana, his beautiful young wife (Greta Scacchi, who projects a movie rarity, authentic sensuality), had married him mostly to hurry him along through the rest of his capital, and had been openly carrying on with Erroll.

Director Michael Radford is clearly less interested in restating this conclusion than he is in re-creating the crime's steaming social context. One noble lady (Sarah Miles) is introduced wearing a very large snake coiled chummily about her neck. Later she will commit a sexual act that may be unprecedented in general-release movies. Another titled woman (Jacqueline Pearce) will rise naked from her bath to lead her assembled guests -- of both sexes -- in a genial discussion of who will accompany her to bed. A rancher (the late Trevor Howard, in his last role) has cut a peephole in his closet so he can spy on women using his guest bathroom. While Broughton is awaiting trial for murder, this same fellow visits him bearing a fine gift box of chocolates in which he has thoughtfully tucked a drug-filled syringe.

This colorful crew is self-satirizing. Any moralizing comment on their behavior would be superfluous. As for the central triangle (a cad, a cuckold and a tin-hearted tart deluded into thinking she has at last found a grand passion), it is too banal to awaken much emotion. Nor is there any point in using these figures from a remote society for social criticism. No, Radford has done the right thing with his material by observing the exaggerated tonalities of glamour-trash fiction. As a result, White Mischief plays as something a lot of people claim to have been missing for years, a good-bad movie. It will shock some of the innocent, titillate others and amuse the sophisticated, who will not be wrong if they detect a certain gleam -- probably wicked, possibly cynical -- in the director's eye.