Isabelle Huppert

Claire Denis' previous and excellent film, "35 Shots of Rum," floated on a poetic cloud of feeling for a French-African father, his grown daughter, and their lives, together and apart, in Paris.

Denis would likely be the first to acknowledge that her latest, "White Material," is far thornier material.

It's also not as good. Yet minor Denis is well worth seeing here for reasons that start, and end, with the stoic magnificence of her chief camera subject, Isabelle Huppert.

Photographed in some of the most gorgeous light on the planet, Huppert portrays a Frenchwoman running a small family coffee plantation in an unnamed African country falling into chaos. "Because of people like you, this country is filthy," a soldier tells Maria (Huppert). The French army is pulling out of the country, leaving behind various factions warring for control. Machete- and rifle-bearing preteens strut around like miniature soldiers of fortune. Meantime, the leader of the rebels (Isaach De Bankole, confined by a too-tight role) hides out on the plantation.

Most other directors might've treated this scenario as a pressure cooker. Denis's feelings for the place and the people are hazier, more inchoate. Her complicated stance toward her protagonist -- colonialist daughter of privilege or a splendid figure of cultural isolation, defiant to the end? -- gives "White Material" its poetic texture. The title refers to artifacts of that colonial privilege, such as a gold-plated cigarette lighter flicked, idly, by one of the rebel fighters. (Denis has been here before, at least metaphorically: She grew up in Africa, the daughter of a French civil servant, and her earlier works include her first feature, "Chocolate," inspired by that childhood.)

The film's interlacing of flashbacks is unusually delicate, and Huppert gives us a sphinx-like woman who does not want to leave, who denies the obvious truths of her surroundings, who does everything she can to harvest one last coffee crop before her world ends. Some of the script's theatrical conceits, though, test one's patience. Maria's layabout son literally lays about, unseen, in bed, for the first third of the picture, only to awaken and in a dramatically unpersuasive way "go native" far too abruptly. (Nicolas Duvauchelle plays the son; Maria's ex-husband, cutting deals with the authorities behind Maria's back, is played by Christophe Lambert.)

I've seen it twice now, first at the 2009 Toronto film festival, and again this week. Its dramatic vexations are at war with Denis' prodigious visual skill. And the fight, ultimately, rewards the viewer.

 

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"White Material" Movie Trailer

 

No MPAA rating (violence, nudity).

Running time: 1:42.

Cast: Isabelle Huppert (Maria Vial); Isaach De Bankole (The Boxer); Christophe Lambert (Andre Vial); Nicolas Duvauchelle (Manuel); Wiliam Nadylam (The Mayor).

Credits: Directed by Claire Denis; written by Denis and Marie N'Diaye; produced by Pascal Caucheteux. An IFC Films release. In French with English subtitles.

 

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