STILL # 3 Isabelle Huppert as “Maria Vial” and Christopher Lambert as “André Vial” in WHITE MATERIAL directed by Claire Denis Photo Credit: © An IFC Films Release (Click to enlarge)

she comes to a definite failure, a definite setback…. That’s what makes her kill what she has white in herself. Because she says “as a white person, I failed, so I have to kill this white part.” So, maybe it’s the idea that mankind at a certain stage gets back to a primitive state of savagery and cruelty. No matter how civilized you are, that’s basically what the world is about right now – between primitive chaos and primitive cruelty and highly advanced civilization. We still are being torn between the two extremes.

How would you characterize the relationship between Maria and her son in the film?
Speaking of him, she says “you are soft.” And she is everything, but not soft. She is hard, she’s determined, she’s stubborn. So she cannot bear to see that soft boy…. Of course, she’s a mother so she has to accept it. But what’s beautiful about it is that her son’s character is attracted to something that he thinks is going to be good for him, but in fact it’s going to be evil. There’s a strange sense of something… it does not know what it is exactly. Like orphaned children, they have an instinctive sense of something. He goes to children, because, being children like him – even though they are younger than him – he can find some kind of community with them. He is a bit like his mother, actually. Her being stubborn and he being idealistic and being attracted by something that attracts him – this violence, this childish violence – but he does not understand that it will be against him…. So, in a way they are equal, in that sense. A totally different way, but in a way they are the… two components of the same behavior.