53rd San Francisco International Film Festival 22 April - 6 May 2010
FILMS/
WHITE MATERIAL
World Cinema
France, 2009, 102 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Tue, Apr 27 / 6:30 / PFA / WMAT27P
Thu, Apr 29 / 9:30 / Kabuki / WMAT29K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Claire Denis
- prod
-
Pascal Caucheteux
- scr
-
Claire Denis, Marie N’Diaye
- cam
-
Yves Cape
- editor
-
Guy Lecorne
- mus
-
Stuart Staples
- cast
-
Isabelle Huppert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Isaach De Bankolé, William Nadylam, Christophe Lambert
- source
-
IFC Films, 11 Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. EMAIL: nabaruch@ifcintheaters.com.
-
CAUSES
Race Relations, War & Conflict
Director Claire Denis returns to Africa for the first time since her masterpiece Beau Travail (SFIFF 2000), with this dark story of a Frenchwoman’s refusal to give up her coffee plantation—and uproot her family—in an unnamed country on the brink of civil war. Denis, who was raised in Africa, once again has made a film demonstrating a deep understanding of the complex relationship between colonizers and colonized. The result is a perceptive depiction of contemporary Africa that is steeped in authenticity and strikingly evocative. Isabelle Huppert, working with Denis for the first time, plays the steely, self-deluding Martha Vial, obstinately continuing the coffee harvest amid the turmoil. Heedless of the French Army’s warnings to evacuate, she carries on even as the plantation’s African workers flee for safety, shrugging off the increasingly baleful portents and threats that close in around her family. While the specter of violence looms ominously over the film, Denis’s tone is characteristically measured and reflective. Through small but carefully observed moments, she immerses the viewer in the eerie, menacing calm that precedes the furious denouement, and regular collaborator Stuart Staples delivers a haunting score that accentuates the protagonists’ mounting sense of hopelessness and isolation. Whereas Denis’s previous film, 35 Shots of Rum (SFIFF 2009), warmly portrayed a group of outsiders coming together to form an unconventional sort of family, this time a traditional family is poisoned and broken apart by the political circumstances enveloping it.
—Jesse Dubus
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