Film Reviews
DRAMA WHITE MATERIAL (15) 105min ●●●●●
Claire Denis’s latest film marks a return to origin both thematically and personally for the filmmaker (her debut 1988 feature Chocolat was similarly set in colonial Africa). Filmed in Cameroon (although time and place remain characteristically imprecise), White Material is set during a civil war between militia and rebel armies where civilians are caught in the crossfire. Related in a fragmentary and oneiric style, the film offers a mesmerising and poetic evocation of a land that is disintegrating and unravelling into chaos. At the heart of this tale is a coffee plantation owner named Maria (a magnificent Isabelle Huppert) who is desperately trying to cling to the last vestiges of a world that is already in disarray. More specifically, Maria (along with her ‘broken’ family) is a troubling presence on screen; she may be representative of a bygone era through her familial connections, but she is
also someone for whom ‘Africa’, in the broadest sense, is ‘home’. For every character in the film, to lose one’s point of origin is to lose everything, resulting in an intense madness and destruction that inevitably leads to death. Violence in White Material is a bleak and futile force that overcomes child and adult alike and serves neither side of the conflict any good. Indeed, the film’s most shocking sequence shows the cold, calculated brutalisation of one of the main characters at the hands of two very young children. However, Denis is too intelligent and philosophical an artist to structure her films around a moral framework or ‘message’.
As with her greatest work, White Material is built upon seemingly incidental details, what remains unspoken, unidentified or unrecognised, the scrutiny of body and landscape alike and the blurring of definitions and boundaries. This rich work rewards repeated viewing and is highly recommended. (Anna Rogers) ■ GFT, Glasgow and selected release from Fri 2 Jul.
DOCUMENTARY VIDEOCRACY (15) 84min ●●●●●
‘Television and power are one and the same here,’ narrates Italian-born and Swedish-based director Erik Gandini in this fascinating portrait of Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy. Over the past three decades Berlusconi, the current Prime Minister, has amassed a formidable media empire – it’s estimated that he now controls 90% of the broadcast media in Italy. During this period the perma-tanned mogul has presided over a cultural revolution by perfecting a strategy of bread and circuses: his TV channels are awash with programmes that worship fame, voluptuous female beauty and wealth, where scantily clad hostesses (vedine) stand silently next to male hosts, then perform the stachetto (a type of dance). This documentary is not, however, a satirical, Michael Moore-style polemic. Gandini adopts a more observational approach, gaining interviews with individuals whose lives are enmeshed in today’s celebrity culture. There’s the provincial mechanic Ricky, dreaming of performing his Ricky Martin-meets- Jean-Claude Van Damme act on reality television. There’s the influential TV agent Lele Mora, proudly displaying the ringtones of an anthem celebrating Mussolini. And there’s the paparazzi boss Fabrizio Corona, who sells incriminating photographs back to celebrities. Videocracy reveals how Berlusconi has used television to promulgate his version of the world, while maintaining the illusion that he’s simply giving people what they want. (Tom Dawson) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh and selected release from Mon 28 Jun.
HORROR/THRILLER HIERRO (12A) 88min ●●●●●
Like the Spanish supernatural chiller The Orphanage, this psychological thriller directed by adman Gabe Ibáñez also revolves around a mother’s search for a missing child. And like its predecessor, Hierro also benefits from being handsomely shot and solidly performed by a cast fronted by a good looking leading lady (here Elena Anaya, recently seen in Mesrine). Opening with a gruesome epilogue in which a woman’s son vanishes in the
aftermath of a spectacular car crash, the film then jumps ahead to young, single yummy mummy Maria (Anaya) and her five-year-old boy Diego en route to a holiday on El Hierro in the Canary Islands. During the ferry trip there Diego disappears and the immediate police investigation proves fruitless. Six months pass and the increasingly distraught Maria is summoned back to Hierro to identify a child’s corpse.
Red herrings and dead ends complicate the mystery, and it’s further obscured by a series of nightmares that Maria experiences during sleep and through recurring visions that she has while wide awake. Eerie flocks of birds, menacing bodies of water . . . It’s all very portentous, but does it add up to much? Well, yes and no. The script by Javier Gullón (King of the Hill) neatly ties up the loose ends of his carefully retro-fitted plot, but the final revelation is nevertheless somewhat underwhelming. (Miles Fielder) ■ Cameo, Edinburgh and selected release from Fri 25 Jun.
44 THE LIST 24 Jun–8 Jul 2010