{"id":85531,"date":"2025-09-25T21:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/85531\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T21:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:36:10","slug":"matt-dillon-leads-claire-deniss-stark-stagy-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/85531\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Dillon Leads Claire Denis’s Stark, Stagy Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe fence<\/a> of the title isn\u2019t a terribly imposing one: a utilitarian, standard-issue wire border, easy bent or broken down, and affording no protection from outside eyes. But it\u2019s the heaviest symbol of many in Claire Denis<\/a>\u2018s stripped-back, forthright new film, a barrier between haves and have-nots that proves as fixed and obdurate as the two men on either side of it, and the tensely opposed societies they stand for. On the inside are the outsiders, white western interlopers making would-be intruders of those whose land they\u2019ve stepped on and built on \u2014 \u201ca construction site in West Africa,\u201d as an opening title card simply declares. Many things are simple in \u201cThe Fence,\u201d an unusually sharp-cornered and rhetorical work from this typically elliptical and sensuous filmmaker, but the rage swelling beneath its still, mannered surface is not.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs much as \u201cThe Fence\u201d represents a departure for the director in some senses \u2014 it\u2019s her first stage adaptation, for one thing, and makes scant attempt to conceal those roots \u2014 in others it\u2019s a kind of homecoming. For the first time since 2009\u2019s immaculate \u201cWhite Material,\u201d Denis returns to the continent that shaped her childhood \u2014 as the daughter of a French civil servant stationed in multiple West African territories \u2014 and is woven through her filmography, from the barbed colonialist nostalgia of her first feature \u201cChocolat\u201d through the revisionist Foreign Legion fever dream of \u201cBeau Travail.\u201d And she returns, too, to the redoubtable Ivorian actor Isaach de Bankol\u00e9, a recurring presence in her oeuvre from her debut, whose potent signature minimalism as a performer lends \u201cThe Fence\u201d both its humanity and its disquieting mystery.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019re in the same contemporary, unidentified postcolonial terrain as \u201cWhite Material,\u201d albeit a flatter, thirstier stretch of it, where white settlers or developers have outstayed a welcome that was never really extended to them in the first place. A lengthy, frictional holding pattern is bristling into something more violent, though the fence stands for now. It surrounds a private construction site \u2014 of unclear purpose, beyond lining western pockets \u2014 presided over by jaded American foreman Horn (Matt Dillon<\/a>) with his deputy, hot-headed British engineering graduate Cal (Tom Blyth<\/a>), and manned by local villagers of understandably doubtful allegiance. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt the outset of a tightly contained narrative that spans under 24 hours, one of these workers has just been killed, in what Horn claims was an unfortunate site accident. That evening, the dead man\u2019s brother Alboury (de Bankol\u00e9) shows up to collect the body and take it home. It\u2019s a simple request that Horn is suspiciously loath to grant, instead glibly inviting Alboury inside the compound for a conciliatory drink. He\u2019s politely but firmly refused by the visitor \u2014 soberly and a bit surreally dressed in a pristine chalkstripe suit courtesy of producing partners Saint Laurent \u2014 who announces his intention to stand implacably on his side of the fence until his demands are met. One man will not be moved physically, the other not emotionally; de Bankol\u00e9\u2019s soft, stoic poise and Dillon\u2019s gruff, spiraling bluster are likewise at odds.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a stark standoff, rife with unspoken accusations and hostilities, that could stand allegorically for any number of racial injustices and inequalities still lingering from the days of colonial occupation. Denis\u2019 script, co-written with Andrew Litvack and Suzanne Lindon, is adapted from \u201cBlack Battles With Dogs,\u201d a 1979 play by Frenchman Bernard-Marie Kolt\u00e8s, and notwithstanding the presence of a smartphone (neutered by a lack of signal), the film could be set at more or less any point in the last half-century: Whatever foul play has occurred here feels the result of a deeply entrenched spirit of western entitlement. (Cal is introduced singing along to \u201cBeds are Burning,\u201d the indigenous land rights anthem by Australian rockers Midnight Oil, as he speeds recklessly across the veld in his pickup truck \u2014 not one of Denis\u2019s subtler needle-drops, though the resonance seems lost on him.)<\/p>\n

\n\tPresented by Denis, DP Eric Gautier and editor Guy Lecorne as a measured, dimly lit shot-reverse-shot volley, the two men\u2019s mutually unyielding conversation is blatantly stage-rooted, but also a strangely compelling psychological stalemate. Denis doesn\u2019t seem entirely at home with material this rigidly verbal, and the performances in turn are sometimes uncertainly directed \u2014 Dillon, while an aptly foreign presence in this severe environment, sometimes seems even more out of place than Horn is supposed to, adrift in a sea of heavily written dialogue. <\/p>\n

\n\tYet a countering, volatile dynamism in the film comes from rising Brit stars Blyth and Mia McKenna-Bruce<\/a>, both excellent, with the latter surprisingly but most effectively cast as Horn\u2019s ill-matched, far younger new bride Leonie. Fresh off the plane from London in hopeless strappy heels, and unprepared for the tacit battleground she\u2019s stumbled into, she\u2019s set in combat mode early by the boorish, hard-drinking Cal when he picks her up from the local airfield and instantly antagonizes her. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut we sense testy desire there too, charging and complicating this otherwise austere setup and combining uneasily with what may or may not be inchoate queer signals elsewhere. Suddenly, then, we\u2019re in more familiarly febrile Denis terrain, and while the expected woozy score by her longtime collaborators Tindersticks may only kick in very late in these hushed, echoey proceedings, no other filmmaker could wring more cinematic sweat out of Kylie Minogue\u2019s droning nu-disco hit \u201cCan\u2019t Get You Out Of My Head,\u201d floating between rooms from a tinny portable speaker. <\/p>\n

\n\tBoth something old from her and something a bit new, \u201cThe Fence\u201d isn\u2019t a major Denis work: Its gear changes from arch, theatrical parable to supple mood piece aren\u2019t smooth ones. But it gnaws steadily away at you, like that Kylie earworm, only to graver effect. \u201cIt\u2019s so unreal here,\u201d Leonie says, only a few hours into her African odyssey, her gaze still misted with an outsider\u2019s fear and reverie. \u201cIt\u2019s very real, you\u2019ll see,\u201d Cal corrects her. \u201cThe Fence,\u201d conscious of its own intrusive perspective, is occasionally distracted by the sensual world \u2014 but mostly seeks to bluntly deromanticize all that heat and dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fence of the title isn\u2019t a terribly imposing one: a utilitarian, standard-issue wire border, easy bent or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[33188,18,117,19,17,56546,33189,56547,327,51595,56548,33191],"class_list":{"0":"post-85531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-claire-denis","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-isaach-de-bankole","14":"tag-matt-dillon","15":"tag-mia-mckenna-bruce","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-san-sebastian-film-festival","18":"tag-the-fence","19":"tag-tom-blyth"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}