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You can take the girl out of the woods, but you can’t take the woods out of the girl — unless, of course, you take the woods away altogether. Such are the tough lessons learned in “Toorbos,” a satisfying marriage of folky period romance and environmental parable from the misty, mossy depths of South Africa’s Knysna forest region: a national beauty spot much enshrined in local literature and lore, but rarely given this kind of grand-scale screen showcase. René van Rooyen’s handsome Afrikaans-language drama is adapted from the last in a celebrated quartet of “Forest Novels” by the late Dalene Matthee, an author whose renown abroad has never quite matched her national-treasure status at home — but is this arthouse fare as internationally accessible as it is locally evocative, unsurprisingly selected as this year’s official South African Oscar submission.

The South African National Parks board is listed as...