Quentin Tarantino has taken grief for his proclamation that he’ll retire after the completion of his 10th film. His suggestion of creative decline is a silly notion that’s easily disproven by the many directors who had masterpieces at the tail end of their careers; Sidney Lumet was 83 as When The Devil Knows You’re Dead was released, Paul Verhoeven showed tremendous energy at 82 with his nunsploitation thriller Benedetta, Martin Scorsese is at work on another project after he released Killers of the Flower Moon at 81, and 96-year-old Clint Eastwood is just two years removed from the release of his final film Juror #2, one of the finest of his career. There’s an equal amount of filmmakers who’ve embarrassed themselves with a late style that’s resulted in a resume that is far spottier. Any praise that Robert Zemeckis has received for Back to the Future or Who Framed Roger Rabbit has to be qualified with the stipulation that he’s also responsible for The Witches, Welcome to Marwen, Pinocchio, and several creepy-looking CGI animated films.
Claire Denis hasn’t completely fallen into the latter category, but she’s edged dangerously close after a few misfires. 2019’s High Life was the last of her films that had a significant wide release, and its bizarre sexual space odyssey might’ve been novel if it hadn’t been released during a renaissance for science fiction cinema. That her latest film, The Fence, was only given a limited release in her home country of France before being dumped on streaming is a sign that she’s lost the enthusiasm of arthouse scholars. It was only four years ago that Sight and Sound magazine ranked her 1999 film Beau Travail as the seventh best of all-time, above Mulholland Drive, Singin’ in the Rain, The Godfather, 8 ½, and The Searchers.
The Fence is based on Bernard-Marie Koltès's play Black Battles with Dogs, a story of conspiracy and murder in a West African construction site. American marketing materials may have tried to frame the title as an allusion to the term for the middleman in a criminal proceeding, but that’s only partially true because the film’s characters are on opposite sides of a fence on the worksite. The foreman, Horn (Matt Dillon), is in the middle of an operation about to be compromised by a Chinese investor’s takeover, but his authority is questioned by the appearance of an enigmatic stranger Alboury (Isaach de Bankolé) dressed in Saint Laurent clothing (the luxury brand co-financed the film). Alboury’s brother died in an accident at the site, and the worker responsible, Cal (Tom Blyth), was dispatched to pick up Horn’s wife, Leonie (Mia McKenna-Bruce), from the airport.
It’s within the first conversation between Horn and Alboury that the film’s strengths and weaknesses are revealed. De Bankolé is a striking actor whose presence at the construction yard is alien, even if he has more claim to the land than Horn does; the other workers are primarily white, and there aren’t any native Africans in positions of leadership. Denis, even at her worst, has an understanding of how to frame a shot, and the barrier that Horn and Alboury are separated by is easily understood to be a prison. Who the prisoner is in the situation is the bigger question; Horn’s the stressed-out manager who has a powerful employer to answer to, but he has the privilege to ensure that a death on his ground is disappeared. His wife is 30 years his junior, in what could be an allusion to the riches of colonialists upon a successful conquest. Alboury must dress like a mogul and speak like a plutocrat to demand basic justice, even though his ancestors had their land stolen. Horn doesn’t pretend to show respect for that; he’s bartered the ceremonial grounds to an outside power broker, and he’s dressed like a slovenly mobster.
These are compelling ideas rendered mute because of the flat direction. The brilliance of the original stage play could allude to an unnamed West African location without specifics, but the film has to open with a tactile establishing shot that lacks ambiguity. The conversational, occasionally eloquent dialogue from Horn would offer any theater actor an opportunity to dig into the character’s intrinsic contradictions, but Dillon’s performance is awkward because he’s trapped in a tactile environment. The power of Alboury’s unfettered gaze and sharp, unaffected inquiries is brilliant as an abstract concept for the victim of violence against his family, but the film isn’t confident enough to revel in De Bankolé’s expressions; the authenticity is eroded by deliberate framing devices made to create suspense.
It’s once the filmmaking techniques reveal themselves to be stale that The Fence is prevented from being an impressionistic piece, and can only be judged as a narrative. This is a problem because the story’s twists and turns are easy to anticipate; Cal might as well have been holding a sign with the proclamation “I’m evil!” Granted, Blyth has made a few interesting performance choices, given that Cal is far more of a loathsome sycophant than a criminal mastermind. Nonetheless, the process taken to create a confrontation between Cal and Alboury is so hackneyed that the end results are underwhelming.
Denis making The Fence is the equivalent of Steven Spielberg doing Ready Player One, which was an adaptation of a book filled with references to his films. Under a different director, The Fence might’ve been a curiosity, but from Denis, it’s a disappointment.