(2010; French) Beginning at the end, on a coffee plantation in a French-speaking African country, government soldiers enter the house of a white French family where they find a dead black man in uniform; they set the building ablaze. Walking alone on a dirt roadway, in the daylight hours before this opening scene, Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), a blonde middle-aged woman in a pale-pink dress, catches a ride, hanging on the outside of the crowded bus, on her way back to the plantation, recalling the events of the past few days beginning with a helicopter overhead announcing the departure of French troops in the midst of armed conflict between rebels and the government, urging Maria to leave as well, then dropping survival kits.

Encountering her African employees fleeing ("Suffering and war everywhere!") from Cafe Vial, she fails to convince them to remain just one more week to harvest the crop. Blockading the road into the village, young men she knows force Maria, driving her truck, to pay $100 to pass on her way to get medicine, retrieved José from school, and hire laborers. Wounded in the gut, the rebel leader, known as The Boxer (Isaach De Bankolé) makes his way to the plantation where his uncle resides.

Depressing, stereotypical depiction of a chaotic and corrupt government of a former colony at war with its own people, denying the legitimate aspirations of most of its black and white citizens, director Claire Denis (collaborating with Marie N'Diaye and Lucie Barleteau on the screenplay) portrays the Vial family as similarly torn over remaining on the land or escaping to France from the spreading violence.

Respectful toward and cooperative with her African laborers, Maria struggles to harvest the coffee beans, bringing in new workers and toiling beside them. Fearful of the undeniable signs of approaching horror ("We'll all die"), her ex-husband André (Christopher Lambert) negotiates with Chérif the mayor for passage out of the country by turning over the unprofitable plantation, but he needs his father's signature on the documents; her lazy son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), is a disappointment. José, André's younger son with an African wife, and his mother Elizabeth also reside on the plantation. Maria's ailing father-in-law has promised her that "the plantation is all yours."

The point of view occasionally shifts from Maria to show the orphan-children soldiers (including girls) among the rebels; a soldier says of a cigarette lighter, "It's just white material," tossing it aside. A radio dj sympathetic to the rebels says over the air: "For white material, the party is over."

After two boys with a machete and a spear steal a pistol, other items, and a chicken from the house, Manuel unarmed and barefoot pursues them only to get caught and stripped naked; shaving his head and baring his tattooed torso, he sets out again with a rifle.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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