White Material (France 2009)

Another truely remarkable film with Isabelle Huppert. She plays Maria Vial, a coffee farmer in an unnamed African state -- Francophone, and presumably a former French colony -- which is in meltdown. There is lawlessness on the streets and, as in Rwanda, radio DJs pour out inflammatory broadcasts. The colonial whites are being blamed. Every day is more dangerous for Maria, but she stubbornly refuses to leave, perhaps because she cannot imagine a life back in France, perhaps because decades of facing down quasi-insurrectionary threats from the indigenous workforce have left her unable to distinguish this grave crisis from all the other temporary mutinies.

White Material is a troubling film that reminded me of Francis Ford Coppola's reading of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, i.e. not as psychological allegory but as fable for pertinent updating. The story revolves around the central figure of Marie, a white European African farm owner, who blindly refuses to acknowledge the danger of increasingly volatile local social unrest. Claire Denis spins a grander web from this precarious situation, invoking the precarious relationships that Marie supports and connects: a one-woman lynch-pin of love, industry and care.

THE FILM
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135952/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/white_material/

DIRECTOR: Claire Denis
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0219136/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Denis

USER REVIEWs
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135952/usercomments
EXTERNAL REVIEWs
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135952/externalreviews
ISABELLE HUPPERT
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001376/bio
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/nov/11/londonfilmfestival2001.londonfilmf...

Category:

Film & Animation

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• White Material (France 2009)
• Claire Denis
• Isabelle Huppert
• director
• french cinema
• cinema
• trailer
• africa
• film