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A period piece inspired by her own childhood as the daughter of a\u00a0French colonial official in Africa, Claire Denis\u2019s first feature film, 1988<\/span>\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Chocolat<\/i>, concerned the domestic arrangements of a\u00a0white family in Cameroon, particularly the mother\u2019s fraught, ambiguously intense relationship with their servant (Isaach de Bankol\u00e9). The director returned to the continent in the late 90<\/span>s and late 2000<\/span>s, to probe other semipermeable bubbles between the West and now-postcolonial Africa. In\u00a0<\/span>Beau Travail<\/i>, the military drills of the French Foreign Legion betray a\u00a0repressed homoeroticism in a\u00a0dazzling desert environment that stands in for an exotic and forbidden Other;\u00a0<\/span>White Material\u00a0<\/i>jumped to the private sector, and back to the nuclear family, as Isabelle Huppert\u2019s hold on her ancestral coffee plantation was threatened by the specter of reappropriation. Now, 16<\/span>\u00a0years deeper into the era of economic globalism, comes Denis\u2019 fourth African film,\u00a0<\/span>The Fence<\/i>, shot in Senegal, about another fracturing homestead in an extractive industry.<\/span><\/p>\n Horn (Matt Dillon), the American foreman at a\u00a0construction site (soon to be taken over by the Chinese) in a\u00a0region crisscrossed by pipelines, awaits the arrival of his young English wife (Mia McKenna-Bruce), while smoothing over the death of a\u00a0worker \u2013 a\u00a0common-enough occurrence, apparently, complicated this time because of the involvement of Horn\u2019s prodigal second-in-command (Tom Blyth). And the victim\u2019s brother, or at least a\u00a0man claiming to be the victim\u2019s brother \u2013 played by Denis\u2019 eternal muse de Bankol\u00e9 \u2013 arrives at the site just after sunset, standing just outside the razor wire-topped fence under the gunsights of the native sentries, demanding the\u00a0body.<\/span><\/p>\n Sixteen years since\u00a0<\/span>White Material\u00a0<\/i>\u2013 37<\/span>\u00a0years since\u00a0<\/span>Chocolate\u00a0<\/i>\u2013 represents a\u00a0long time in our thinking about the legacy of imperialism and the politics of representation, a\u00a0long time to reflect on how apologetic a\u00a0European filmmaker must be about burrowing into the dualities of belonging and unbelonging implicit in the white colonial experience, so it\u2019s perhaps a\u00a0necessary disclaimer that early in the film Blyth\u2019s character sings along to Midnight Oil\u2019s \u200b\u201c<\/span>Beds Are Burning\u201d apparently oblivious to the song\u2019s relevance to his situation: \u200b\u201c<\/span>It belongs to them\/Let\u2019s give it back.\u201d In English, as three of Denis\u2019 last four films have been, this is a\u00a0very blunt joke, as is the slogan on the workers\u2019 safety vests: \u200b\u201c<\/span>Paving the way to a\u00a0greener future.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Denis is otherwhere less didactic, and certainly less than inclined to cede the floor. As in White Material, in which he played a\u00a0wounded revolutionary, de Bankol\u00e9 is a\u00a0ghost at the feast for the film\u2019s white characters, unsettling still and immaculately dressed as Dillon bargains, badgers, threats and wheedles from inside the wire. The script, adapted from a\u00a0French play by Bernard-Marie Kolt\u00e8s, retains a\u00a0certain staginess in translation: Dillon in particular seems to be pronouncing every comma as he and de Bankol\u00e9 face off from opposite sides of the titular fence, which one can easily picture bisecting an otherwise bare stage. Blyth\u2019s character\u2019s conscience-crisis breakdown, which begins with aggressive flirtation with the boss\u2019s wife, moves to chugging the champagne put on ice for a\u00a0family dinner deferred again and again by narrative complications, then going walkabout in the desert, feels like the breakdown of Huppert\u2019s son in\u00a0<\/span>White Material<\/i>, but charted on the page rather than truly erratic, and all this signifies simply a\u00a0frustrating and counterintuitive choice of source material for a\u00a0filmmaker such as Denis, whose cinema is so elliptical, so mysteriously true to the lived sensual experience of confusing power dynamics. Her greatest and most beguiling films can sound, on the page, bald-faced and almost insultingly banal; the challenge when writing about, say,\u00a0<\/span>Beau Travail\u00a0<\/i>is to convey how a\u00a0simple thesis, about how masculinity and empire sublimate taboo desire into rituals of domination, can feel so quicksilver, heedless and immersive onscreen.<\/span><\/p>\n Denis, here working with new regular DP<\/span> \u00c9ric Gautier, has handled the digital transition as well as any filmmaker. 2022<\/span>\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Stars at Noon<\/i>, which Gautier also shot,<\/span>\u00a0<\/i>had a\u00a0bleached, harsh daylight look to it; this is the nocturnal companion piece, which brings out the textures of sweaty skin outdoors in the cooling night and prickly pallid skin indoors in the air conditioning, in a\u00a0complex of shipping-containing housing humming with artificial light and the hum of generators. The sight lines always keep you off-balance, drawing you into a\u00a0bleary and reactive tactility, pocked by the almost-too-intimate textures of red dirt sloughing off a\u00a0bare leg in a\u00a0weak shower. McKenna-Bruce, who deplanes at a\u00a0dusty airstrip in spike heels carrying a\u00a0makeup case emblazoned with the word \u200b\u201c<\/span>Babe\u201d is best-in-cast, fragile and jet-lagged and never comfortable in one mood for long in a\u00a0role similar to that of Vincent Gallo\u2019s tender spurned bride in\u00a0<\/span>Trouble Every Day<\/i>. She wanders around the last third of the film in a\u00a0red slip that clings to her obscenely, moving as if she can feel the entire continent touching her\u00a0skin.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n