Claire Denis, “White Material”
Last night I went to the third film in Carleton’s Tournées French Film Festival - White Material by the French director Claire Denis. The intentionally and beautifully disjoined story concerns a woman - played by Isabelle Huppert - trying to save her family’s coffee plantation during a rebellion in an unnamed African country.
A person could write up all of White Material’s plot in a few hundred words, but the film is driven by its amazing cinematography - everything from slowly-developing war scenes and gorgeous landscape shots to still-life interiors and tense conversations. It’s far from a happy film, but it is engrossing and mysterious.
