{"id":200697,"date":"2025-09-04T22:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T22:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200697\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T22:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T22:39:10","slug":"matt-dillon-in-claire-denis-africa-set-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200697\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Dillon in Claire Denis’ Africa-Set Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs a Frenchwoman who spent most of her childhood in West Africa, Claire Denis<\/a> is no stranger to the social and racial tensions colonialism left behind on the continent. From her breakout feature, Chocolat, to works like White Material and her masterpiece, Beau Travail, she\u2019s explored those tensions through enigmatic stories about white characters living in a land that doesn\u2019t necessarily want them anymore.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat sentiment is front and center in The Fence, a sequestered and highly theatrical drama set on an African construction site that feels much more like a colonial outpost. The remote, dust-filled locale is overseen by Horn (Matt Dillon<\/a>), a world-weary American foreman who, in the course of one very long night, has to deal with both a possible murder cover-up and the arrival of his British girlfriend, Leonie (Mia McKenna-Bruce), in hostile territory.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Fence\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tA minor film from a major director.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue:<\/strong> Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
Cast:<\/strong> Matt Dillon, Isaach De Bankol\u00e9, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Tom Blyth, Brian Begnan
Director:<\/strong> Claire Denis
Screenwriters:<\/strong> Suzanne Lindon, Andrew Litvack, Claire Denis, adapted from the play Black Battles with Dogs by Bernard-Marie Kolt\u00e8s
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 49 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAdapted from the 1979 play by Bernard-Marie Kolt\u00e8s (a celebrated French playwright who died from AIDS at age 41), this is one of the director\u2019s stagier movies, eschewing her trademark visual lyricism to concentrate more on dialogue and performance \u2014 sometimes to a fault. But she also coaxes terrific turns out of younger cast members McKenna-Bruce (star of How to Have Sex<\/a>) and the magnetic Tom Blyth<\/a>, whose onscreen chemistry conveys the kind of sensual longing Denis is known for.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlyth plays Cal, a jumpy and cocksure construction manager who is very much the third wheel \u2014 or more like the monkey wrench \u2014 in the recent couple formed by Leonie and the considerbly older Horn. Even worse, Cal could be behind the death of an African worker (Brian Begnan), whose brother, Alboury, has shown up at the site to claim the man\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat brother is portrayed by Ivorian actor Isaach de Bankol\u00e9, a regular of Denis\u2019 since Chocolat, who appears here as a looming menace, standing on the other side of the fence that separates the white characters from the countryside. Soft-spoken and unrelenting, Alboury emerges as the only moral voice in a land of postcolonial abandon, refusing to let Cal get away with what may be homicide, while disrupting Horn\u2019s romantic first night with Leonie.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, romanticism has never been Denis\u2019 thing, and from the moment Leonie touches down at a tiny airstrip, the reality of where she\u2019s landed becomes apparent. Cal picks her up in a muddy old 4\u00d74, then takes her on a bumpy ride through the bush during which the tension quickly heightens between them. When a crow flies into the pickup\u2019s fender, Cal gets out and uses a rock to put the bird out of its misery. So much for the safari.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat long driving sequence, and a few other scenes between Blyth and McKenna-Bruce, reveal Denis\u2019 talent for fostering a taut and highly sexualized atmosphere on the verge of either explosion or desolation. Working with DP Eric Gautier (who also shot the director\u2019s last feature, Cannes prizewinner Stars at Noon<\/a>), she makes the most out of the limited setting, especially when the camera ventures beyond the construction headquarters \u2014 basically a bunch of shipping containers stuck together \u2014 to explore the dark vastness outside.<\/p>\n

\n\tLess convincing are some of the dramatically hefty scenes involving Dillon\u2019s Horn, who seems, at times, to be reciting his dialogue rather than fully embodying it. His scenes can feel both loaded and stilted, as if they were translated from the Kolt\u00e8s play without organically working themselves into the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tDenis is a great director of actors, but we remember her films less for the lines her characters say \u2014 if they even speak (see her haunting and nearly mute thriller, The Intruder) \u2014 than for how she avidly captures their bodies in motion. Many of the best Denis performances, such as Alex Descas\u2019 in 35 Shots of Rum<\/a> or Denis Lavant\u2019s in Beau Travail or, are feats of pure physicality.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Fence suffers from dialogue overload and a somewhat stagy mise-en-sc\u00e8ne, although those elements occasionally yield strong sequences fraught with unsettledness, if not outright hostility, when the drama finally boils over. As the night wanes and the truth behind Cal\u2019s act and Horn\u2019s past comes to light, the conflict spills out into the sunshine, leaving none of the characters unscathed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film\u2019s downbeat ending shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone familiar with Denis\u2019 movies, which have always leaned toward tragedy, especially when the action has been set in Africa. The difference here is how explicitly that tragedy appears, whereas the director built much of her best work on nuance and suggestion \u2014 on the viewer experiencing events rather than fully grasping them. The Fence features some of that moody allusiveness as well, but ultimately plays like the minor work of a still major filmmaker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a Frenchwoman who spent most of her childhood in West Africa, Claire Denis is no stranger to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":200698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[111057,171,83956,53,64287,111058,111059,111060,77123,85256,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-200697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-claire-denis","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-matt-dillon","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-tiff","13":"tag-tiff-2025","14":"tag-tom-blyth","15":"tag-toronto-2025","16":"tag-toronto-film-festival","17":"tag-toronto-international-film-festival","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115148434087535088","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}