White Material - NYT Critics' Pick

[lsanderson]

Isabelle Huppert in “White Material.”
Hanging on for a Dear Way of Life
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: November 18, 2010

Early in Claire Denis’s powerful, agonized film “White Material,” you see a woman in a short pink dress, Maria — played by a sublime Isabelle Huppert — hanging off the back of a bus. The setting is a contemporary unnamed African country being torn to pieces by government troops, marauding rebels and the enduring ravages of European colonialism. As she holds on tight, her short-sleeved dress fluttering, the camera moves in close enough for you to see the muscles in Ms. Huppert’s thin arms popping, straining with the terrific effort that encapsulates the will to survive. More