Isabelle Huppert as “Maria Vial” in WHITE MATERIAL directed by Claire Denis Photo Credit: © An IFC Films Release (Click to enlarge)

She’s just somebody who’s rooted in that country. Maybe she was not born there. But maybe she got married or she followed her first husband and she created a number of ties there – family ties, work ties. And that’s what a human being is made of. These kinds of links that make you want to stick to a piece of land and not leave it behind… [and] maybe there’s a denial.

Maria resists definition. Her actions can often be described as being both naïve and strong-willed. I can’t think of a character in post-colonial film or literature that resembles her. It’s like the bottle – half empty or half full – you can say she’s naïve, you can say she’s stubborn, you can also say that she has a perfect, right distance to everyone because she’s never compassionate to these people. She really treats [them] equally, even though she’s the boss. She has no demagogy. It’s out of a field of comprehension where there could be conflict. Even when The Boxer, the wounded man, shows up, she doesn’t have fear. She just sees a wounded man. I think that Claire voluntarily blurs the borders between enemies. She’s above this kind of pattern.

Maria seems to except herself from the colonial divisions that characterize a great deal of the film and fiction about contemporary Africa.
That’s why the movie is so good, because even in the end, in this terrible scene, which for me is almost a symbolic scene, a metaphorical scene. The scene is not meant to be [Maria] taking revenge upon her stepfather, it’s more philosophical. I take it as if she’s almost killing the white part of herself. Because she finally had to understand, by having to face her son’s death and her ex-husband’s death,