Isabelle Huppert (along with Helen Mirren, Juliette Binoche and Laura Linnie) is one of my five favorite actors (the only male on the list being Bill Murray), so I had no doubt that she could realistically play a colonial coffee farmer trying to hang on in soon-to-be post-colonial Africa.
From the opening scene, there seems to be no doubt that things will turn out badly for Huppert's character. This is, after all, not war-torn Algeria portrayed in "Battle of Algiers", where the French are going to fight tenaciously to hold onto "their" land and then suddenly fold and get out of Dodge City. This is sub-Saharan Africa, and the politicians back in France know that it will be more profitable, and maybe even easier for them, to turn their colonies over to local African dictators, who can then be bought off for the benefit of French corporations and politicians. It's a win-win situation for everyone...except for the vast majority of Africans and Huppert's character. Perhaps we could let the French off the hook by saying that France couldn't have prepared their African colonies for independence if they had wanted to. But the French certainly did nothing positive in their colonies during their stay or after they left (the best we can say is that the Belgians in the Congo were much worst).
This is life in the land of barely living, where the local African warlords have no background in or time for the niceties of "civilized" brutality and exploitation a la française. Huppert seems oddly out of place, a relatively nice colonist who perhaps thinks naively that she can trade on her relative niceness to survive the new and very ugly reality about to engulf her. But she is completely out of touch with the reality. She could choose to leave, unlike the Africans who work on her plantation. But she somehow thinks she has no choice but to stay even as child-soldiers wander across the countryside around here.
I mainly saw "White Material" mainly because I like Isabelle Huppert acting, because one seldom sees a movie filmed in sub-Saharan Africa and because I had read Louroma's "Les Soleils des Indépendance" dealing with Ivory Coast. But I spent most of the movie hoping that when her time came, Huppert's character would take one carefully-aimed shot to head to relieve her suffering.
A couple of other points. The Supplement interview with Claire Denis is well worth seeing (Isabelle Huppert's interview is okay; unfortunately the disk wouldn't let me watch the interview with Isaach de Bankolé). I was glad that the child-soldiers were not shown committing a lot of the violence in the film. And as Denis points out, the local actors were very good. I also know that not all African countries are the same, but I also wondered about whether there was a lot of violence against women during the conflict in Ivory Coast like is currently occurring every day in Congo. Still I was glad that violence against women was not shown; it wouldn't have added to the film's message or effect.
From the opening scene, there seems to be no doubt that things will turn out badly for Huppert's character. This is, after all, not war-torn Algeria portrayed in "Battle of Algiers", where the French are going to fight tenaciously to hold onto "their" land and then suddenly fold and get out of Dodge City. This is sub-Saharan Africa, and the politicians back in France know that it will be more profitable, and maybe even easier for them, to turn their colonies over to local African dictators, who can then be bought off for the benefit of French corporations and politicians. It's a win-win situation for everyone...except for the vast majority of Africans and Huppert's character. Perhaps we could let the French off the hook by saying that France couldn't have prepared their African colonies for independence if they had wanted to. But the French certainly did nothing positive in their colonies during their stay or after they left (the best we can say is that the Belgians in the Congo were much worst).
This is life in the land of barely living, where the local African warlords have no background in or time for the niceties of "civilized" brutality and exploitation a la française. Huppert seems oddly out of place, a relatively nice colonist who perhaps thinks naively that she can trade on her relative niceness to survive the new and very ugly reality about to engulf her. But she is completely out of touch with the reality. She could choose to leave, unlike the Africans who work on her plantation. But she somehow thinks she has no choice but to stay even as child-soldiers wander across the countryside around here.
I mainly saw "White Material" mainly because I like Isabelle Huppert acting, because one seldom sees a movie filmed in sub-Saharan Africa and because I had read Louroma's "Les Soleils des Indépendance" dealing with Ivory Coast. But I spent most of the movie hoping that when her time came, Huppert's character would take one carefully-aimed shot to head to relieve her suffering.
A couple of other points. The Supplement interview with Claire Denis is well worth seeing (Isabelle Huppert's interview is okay; unfortunately the disk wouldn't let me watch the interview with Isaach de Bankolé). I was glad that the child-soldiers were not shown committing a lot of the violence in the film. And as Denis points out, the local actors were very good. I also know that not all African countries are the same, but I also wondered about whether there was a lot of violence against women during the conflict in Ivory Coast like is currently occurring every day in Congo. Still I was glad that violence against women was not shown; it wouldn't have added to the film's message or effect.