Dir/Wri: Claire Denis | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Isaac De Bankole, Giulia Boschi, Francois Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin | France, Drama 105′
In her intimately observed feature debut Claire Denis draws on her own experience of growing up in the twilight years of French authority in 1950s Africa exploring the social dynamics between the past and the present for men and women, black and white in pre and post colonial Africa
Isabelle Huppert is a young woman who returns to a remote outpost in West Africa where her formative years were spent in the company of Protee her family’s black ‘houseboy’ a powerful presence of dignity and intelligence played by Isaac De Bankole. The overall effect is one of resonating tranquility as we become enraptured by the daily exchanges between France and Protee as the story flows from to present that culminates in a luminous finale – that was then and this is now and we should not try to compare the two or apologise for history. @MeredithTaylor
ON 4K RESTORATION BFI BLU-RAY & DIGITAL from 29 APRIL 2024