White Material

City Paper Grade: A-

by Sam Adams

ROCKY ROAD: Claire Denis' White Material is part morality play, part political commentary, but it resists easy interpretation.

[ City Paper Grade: A- ]

After the elliptical Intruder and 35 Shots of Rum, Claire Denis plays it relatively straight with the story of African coffee plantation owner Maria (Isabelle Huppert), who clings to her land despite an imminent native revolt. Denis based the circumstances on recent developments in Sierra Leone, but the film doesn't specify a time or place, giving it the quality of a fable or a morality play, and reflecting her childhood as the daughter of an itinerant French civil servant who was posted to a half-dozen current and former colonies. Maria lives with her father and son, and her ex-husband (played with decaying menace by Christophe Lambert) and his wife and child live nearby, a world a few acres wide that she refuses to leave even as the French military's helicopters fly off, dropping a few forlorn packets of supplies as a parting gift. It's not clear whether it's determination, stubbornness or psychosis that keeps her behind, or whether her failure to recognize the rapidly changing circumstances around her is due to an act of will or a perceptual block. When men with guns step out from the brush by the side of the road and demand a hundred dollars to let her pass, she recalls their former professions to them — a gym teacher, the son of a seed-seller — as if they might hang their heads and sheepishly let her pass. The situation worsens as her workers desert her, leaving a ripe crop to rot in the fields, and her indolent son (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is set upon by gun-toting children, emerging physically unscathed but mentally unhinged. A rebel leader known as the Boxer (Isaach De Bankolé) wanders through the crumbling world, bleeding from a gunshot wound and hardly speaking a word. Even some Denis admirers have underestimated White Material due to its relatively transparent style, but its simplicity is deceptive. Like Huppert's character, the film resists easy interpretation. You can almost feel the dirt between your fingers, but putting the feeling into words is another matter.