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Written in collaboration between director Claire Denis and novelist Marie N'Diaye, "White Material" is a trenchant allegory about post-colonial existence in an unnamed African region.
Civil war has broken out between rebel soldiers and the militia. French peacekeepers drop useless "survival kits" from helicopters before withdrawing from rampant violence that has made their mission impossible.
Isabelle Huppert plays Maria Vial, a French coffee plantation owner who underestimates the encroaching danger around her. She doesn't pretend to take political sides although she allows a wounded rebel hero known as "the Boxer" (Isaach De Bankolé) to hide on her property.
Independent and fearless Maria shares her lazy teenage son Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle) with her ex-husband André (Christophe Lambert) who works behind her back to sell off the farm. André's father Henri (Michael Subor) tries to cut a deal with the local mayor for protection.
Determined to harvest her farm's coffee beans, Maria hires local men to do the work after her employees abandon their posts. Told in an anti-plot narrative that anxiously pits the inertia of flashbacks against forward moving action, Denis drops the viewer into the story like setting a domesticated animal free for the first time. History will repeat itself, as it always does, with subtle variations on how the inevitable destruction of a fragile way of life will occur.
"White Material" is an exacting glimpse inside the self-destructive mind of people attempting to impose their will on a place that refuses its currency. Nothing will ever be the same again.
