White Material

White Material is a Claire Denis film, with all of the strengths that description entails. Fans of the redoubtable French filmmaker know to expect a thoughtfully exploratory, elliptical narrative, occasionally jolted to the visceral with moments of intimacy and brutality. Here Denis returns to the colonial Africa of her 1988 debut, Chocolat, with a story of an older Frenchwoman, Marie (Isabelle Huppert), a coffee grower who refuses to see the political turmoil rising up around her and acknowledge that she and her family are in mortal danger. Denis' style always has a vivid sensuality. Whether she's depicting a dust storm kicked up by a passing helicopter, the toil of a coffee harvest, or a young white man being tormented by two African child soldiers, her work invades our senses. Perhaps more than any other director, her productions are rooted in the tactile. White Material is also a film of complex morality and humanity. One gets the sense that Denis empathizes with the suffering of all of her characters, from Huppert's hubristically stalwart Marie to her feckless, confused son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), to the valorized rebel leader known as "The Boxer" (Denis regular Isaach De Bankolé). There are no simple characterizations or easy answers in this slow-moving, but inexorable, spiral into tragedy and bloody murder.