QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM SAN SEBASTIAN
Seventy-nine-year-old French filmmaker Claire Denis returns to Africa in order to dissect the topic of neocolonialism. That’s the continent where two of her most acclaimed films take place: Beau Travail (1996) and White Material (2009). Based on Bernard-Marie Koltès’s play Black Battles with Dogs, The Fence takes place in a large building site “somewhere in West Africa”. It tells the story of two white workers desperately seeking to cover up the murder of a black employee, while the victim’s brother insists that they return his lifeless body.
Booted and suited Alboury (Isaach de Bankolé) shows up inside the high security compound inhabited by frontman Horn (Matt Dylon), his sidekick Cal (Tom Blyth) and a few black labourers. Horn is surprised that his guards have inexplicably allowed the stranger in. It is the middle of the nighr, and a calm and restrained Alboury demands to see the body of his dead brother, who was killed earlier in a “work accident”. In reality, Cal shot him at close range simply because the man insisted to go home an hour earlier, and then ran the bulldozer over his corpse. Horn invites Alboury in for “a whiskey’, and offers him money, promising that the body will be ready to return top his family in the morning. Alboury refuses to budge. He insists that he will not leave without his dead brother.
Earlier in the day, Cal picked up Horn’s recently-wed wife Leone (Mia McKenna-Bruce) from a tiny airfield. She arrived on a very small aircraft, loaded with two large suitcases as big as her own body. Her high heels aren’t the most appropriate footwear for the sandy and inhospitable environment, however the lady is undaunted by the sterile compound and bleak bedroom where she’s supposed to leave. She seems to genuinely love Horn, whom she met in London whilst he was being treated for a horrible work-related wound that left him castrated. Cal is well aware of his genital advantage and prepared to put it to use when appropriate. These are opportunistic males with little regard and respect for their peers, their employees, their environment and their women. They embody the short-sighted ambitions and recklessness of Western colonialism.
The titular fence represents the divide between the oppressor and the oppressed also their most viable meeting point. Both sides are lulled into a deceptive sense of security by the eerie chanting of the guards. Cal reassures Leona that their cries are a sign of peace. That the unwilling eunuch can only guess, since he cannot understand the local language -. The French titles “Le Cri des Gardes” translates as “the cry of the guards”, alluding specifically to this duality. The black locals atop the security towers – whose faces we never see – operate as the middlemen, and their allegiance is extremely complicated. They must remain loyal to their employers, thereby retaining a few privileges, while also staying faithful to the locals, with whom they must live and for whom they must provide. They epitomise the complexity of neocolonial relations.
Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of my Head represengts one of the few moments of emotional relief. The irony of the lyrics does not go unnoticed: Cal listens to the cheesy song just as Alboury refuses to move, and the images of the dead man refuse to leave his mind. This isn’t the first time Denis uses very unexpected Western pop in order to illustrate a moment of catharsis: she played Corona’s Rhythm of the Night to vaguely similar results in final scene of Beau Travail. The outcome here is less impactful because the tune is played in the middle of the film, and there is no dancing. Yet the symbolism is no less clear: jaunty tunes have the power to deconstruct certain patterns of masculinity.
Leone is the most balanced character, the only one capable of reasonable thinking. Horn often boasts being sensible, yet his claims are vacuous. His offer of hospitality, kindness and indeed money have nothing to do with generosity and altruism. They are an integral part of the manipulation tactics that he learnt from his employers. On the other hand, the woman is capable of some empathy and solidarity. So much that Alboury never feels threatened by her presence. The two nearly bond in their marginalised status.
Filmed in the arid flatlands of Senegal, The Fence is an aesthetically accomplished and visually enrapturing endeavour. The takes are long and the dialogues sparse, allowing for lyrical stoicism to prevail. Dust storms are combined with the artificial lights of the construction site to dazzling results. Except for Leone’s arrival at daytime, all of the action takes place during one night, with a symbolic denouement at dawn. Ultimately, it is darkness that prevails. There is little hope of redemption. The machinations of colonialism continue to punish both the Black Africans forced to work on international projects of no benefit top their community, and also the white European henchmen (Horn and Cal) lured by promise of money and privilege.
The Fence is in the Official Competition of the 73rd San Sebastian International Film Festival. A fine and meaningful addition to the vast filmography of a singular filmmaker who helped to shatter race, gender and geographic conventions.
