Café au sang

White Material

Crit

What a strange, confusing, disturbing film. The exquisite Isabelle Huppert stubbornly clings to a failing coffee plantation in an unnamed African country even though (1) civil war is making life hell for blacks and double-hell for whites, (2) the place belongs not to her but to her weak ex-husband, who is eager to be shut of it, and his dying father, whose position is ambiguous, and (3) surely Paris would offer her easier access to the team of psychologists needed to keep her bad-seed son from going completely Jared Loughner.

One of those films I respect and admire a lot more than I really like.