Mariana is that rare health professional who unfailingly views her patient as a human being.

Played by Ines de Medeiros, she makes sure a coma patient (Isaach De Kankole) avoids the sun, and gets his forehead pat, little gestures that other nurses wouldn't think to do.

However, once this exemplary healer leaves her native turf of Portugal, for the stark, volcanic terrain of Cape Verde, it's as if she starts to disintegrate, showing coldness to staff at a clinic where her ward awaits an unknown person who paid for his return home.

We meet all manner of person in the village, though it's never entirely clear who means what. Along the way we meet some wonderful local musicians. Dancing at a club is lovely to observe.

I puzzled over the significance of Creole-speaking emigree Edith (Edith Scob), only later to realize in a discussion sponsored by the New York Public Library that she followed her political-prisoner husband to the island, treasuring his poetic love letters.

The scenario for most of the movie is the island of Fogo (Fire), in the southern end of the Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) archipelago. There is an active volcano near the center of the island. Most of the soil is solidified lava, used as material for houses. (which explains the movie's original title, Casa de Lava, House of Lava). The islands, 600 km west of the the Senegalese coast were a Portuguese colony until 1975. They played a role in the European slave trade and their present economy is precariously sustained by tourism and not much else.

As the movie begins, there are shots of an eruption of the volcano in 1954 and closeups of some of the personages to come. Then we jump to a construction site in Lisbon where Leão (Isaach de Bankolé) suffers an accident and ends up in coma in a hospital. Somebody (from his family?) mails an air ticket for him to return to Fogo. Mariana, a nurse, volunteers to assist the unconscious Leão during the trip. Her first impression of Fogo is a dusty, desolate airstrip; the pilots lend some help but seem eager to get away. Mariana manages to get Leão to the local hospital, formerly a leper colony. The hospital is in disarray and has very scant resources. Mariana's first hurdle is to locate Leão's family. Her interchanges with the locals are tense, and her questions are answered with a combination of silence, oblique non sequiturs and back questions and occasionally with violence. Communication is also impeded by their speaking Creole, that Mariana barely understands.

The positives: Acting is good all around. Cinematography is excellent but abuses trick lighting, which gives some scenes an artificial look. The negatives: Some characters are schematic or imperfectly fleshed out, and the pace is too slow. What is the film trying to show, if anything? Perhaps the indifference of Portugal (as any other colonial power) towards its ruthlessly exploited ex-colonies. Perhaps the European hubris that blocks Mariana from understanding the locals. Perhaps Mariana's dissatisfaction with her life in Lisbon that leads her to think of her island sojourn as an adventure. In the end, I was somewhat disappointed.