While not as well-acquainted with Claire Denis as I ought to be (The Intruder did not motivate an intrust in Jean-Luc Nancy, but 35 Shots of Rum was a warm and moving family study), White Material strikes me as a near-masterpiece. Isabelle Huppert is typically ferocious, but the film’s incendiary post-colonial politics provides a valuable focus to her rage (usually internalized in icy psychodramas). The final climatic moments arrive with the impact of shotgun blasts, with Huppert’s act of patricide undertaken in a burst of overlapping editing and violent disruption of the 180° rule. Such unexpected stylistic bravura is an inversion of the great burst of revolutionary fervour in The Battleship Potemkin – which initially explodes in the celebrated plate-smashing montage. Here, instead, the abrupt murder of the plantation’s patriarch provides no possibility for liberation, but instead seals Huppert within the vindictive cycle of violence rippling outwards throughout the country. A staggering exemplification of the psychology and politics of racial conflict.
Rating: * * * * *
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