White Material at the NYFF

Our single New York Film Festival movie lived up to A. O. Scott's recent screed: it was depressing, dispiriting, disheartening. Known for her sensuousness, here filmmaker Claire Denis returns to the Africa of her childhood, telling the story of a stubborn, semi-sane white family in the midst of a coup somewhere in Francophone Africa. "I don't like metaphor," Denis said during the Q&A. "It's a story about a rotten family." But the movie is filled with images and allusions, told largely through flashbacks. Gorgeous Isabelle Huppert plays the matriarch, by turns naive and arrogant, who oversees a dying coffee plantation. Her love of the country blinds her to the political realities of post-colonial life.

After the screening, an audience member asked why Denis thought we should care about these "despicable characters," including the violent, hyperactive child soldiers whose actions and fate shocked us all. (Denis dedicated the movie to these "little rascals," because "they are the victims.") Isaach de Bankole, who plays an aging hero of the rebellion, had the best answer. Americans want a hero, he said, but in life "everybody's on a path of failure." Sigh. True enough.

Photo: thanks