by Gill Pringle at San Sebastian International Film Festival
Claire Denis was raised in colonial French Africa, her family living between Burkina Faso, French Somaliland, Cameroon and Senegal, therefore many of her films have dealt with issues of African colonialism and post-colonialism.
Despite moving back to France as a young teen, Africa has long continued to pull at her heart – The Fence representing perhaps her deepest personal connection.
Based on Bernard-Marie Koltès’s play Black Battles with Dogs, she first met the late playwright almost 40 years ago when she was writing the screenplay for Chocolat, which would become her feature directorial debut in 1988.
“Back then, like everyone else, I went to the Amandiers Theater in Nanterre. I had met Isaach de Bankolé and was writing my first screenplay, Chocolat, with him in mind for the role of a servant in a white family. He didn’t have much dialogue, but I knew his almost silent, lucid presence would give the film its balance,” recalls Denis.
“Going to Nanterre was as much about seeing the plays as about running into Isaach, who was not only Bernard-Marie Koltès’ friend but, as they called each other, his ‘brother’.
“Bernard’s plays struck me as magnificent, more than most contemporary works. And Black Battles with Dogs spoke to me deeply, connected to my childhood in Africa,” she adds.
Although Koltès would die from AIDS in 1989, during his sickness he grew to believe that Denis was in fact filming Black Battles with Dogs. “I didn’t contradict him. Even in the hospital, he told me I absolutely had to finish the film. I never dared say no.
“For a long time, out of fear, I resisted the idea. But slowly, I convinced myself that I had to honour Bernard-Marie’s wish,” says Denis speaking today at San Sebastian where The Fence is competing in the program’s prestigious Official Selection.
Filmed in Senegal, The Fence is set in a vast public works project in West Africa. Here, we meet Matt Dillon’s construction site manager Horn, and Tom Blyth’s young engineer Cal, the two men sharing lodging behind the double gates of their compound.
Horn’s recent young British bride Leone (Mia McKenna-Bruce) flies out to join them on the same night that a man named Alboury (Isaach de Bankolé) appears at the fence.
Like a spectre in the darkness, Alboury demands the body of his brother who died earlier that day on the site. He will hound the two men all night long until they return it, as Leone watches the disaster play out before her.
When former child actress McKenna-Bruce, 28, started out on her career, she never in a million years imagined that she’d one day be cast as Matt Dillon’s wife. “Absolutely not!” she says. “When it first came through to play Matt Dillon’s wife. I was like, ‘I look young as it is; they are not gonna go for this.’ But then I met Claire, and I think it really works in the movie. I feel like you don’t feel the age gap,” says McKenna-Bruce.
Both she and co-star Tom Blyth had long admired Denis’ films, noting how she regularly worked with international actors such as Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn in Stars at Noon or Robert Pattinson in High Life.
“I’ve been a fan for quite a while, and I’d seen Beau Travail years ago,” says Blyth [below] referencing the filmmaker’s seminal 1999 film, hailed as one of the greatest films of the ‘90s.
“I don’t think I’d taken it in properly. I remembered all the images, but I don’t think I appreciated that it was Claire, and then I saw High Life with Robert Pattinson and you think: ‘Wow, Who’s this?’ So then I went back and revisited Beau Travail and Chocolat, and obviously Stars at Noon and a few others, and fell in love with her.
“I said to my agent, if I ever get the chance to meet Claire, let alone work with her, I would love to,” says Blyth, 30, who has recently dominated the small screen starring as Billy the Kid and also in The Gilded Age.
Interestingly, his first role was alongside Australia’s own Russell Crowe, billed as a “feral child” in Robin Hood (2010). “Russell, obviously, is quite a foreboding figure, like he’s a powerhouse, you know? And you hear the stories about how intense he is, but I found him nothing but lovely,” said Blyth.
“I mean, I was like 13 or 14, and basically a glorified extra, but he welcomed me and four others, like we were members of the cast, and threw a big barbecue for everyone. He was lovely, a proper gentleman. Gladiator was one of my favourite films growing up, so getting to meet him, and him being like a lovely guy was one of those moments where: ‘oh, people are nice in this business,’” recalls the Julliard-trained actor who also played a young President Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.
While the subject of The Fence is dark and foreboding, filming in Senegal was joyous. “It was an incredible place, and we got to spend a lot of time exploring, because a lot of it was night shoots, so we did get to really experience Senegal during the day, which was incredible,” says McKenna-Bruce [below].
“Usually, you don’t get a chance to explore the country, but because we were shooting nights, and also because Claire, when she feels like she’s got the shot, she’s happy, and moves on. So, we’d finish at 2am every night, instead of 5am and so we could actually explore Senegal in the morning and go out and be with the locals – and adopt a dog!” laughs Blyth who rescued a sick puppy on the beach and took her home.
Under Denis’ deft direction, The Fence plays like a Shakespearean tragedy.
“In Nigeria, Ghana, and western Cameroon, English is spoken between whites and Blacks,” says Denis explaining her choice to mainly use the English language.
“I find that politeness is more audible in English; excessive politeness which heightens distance and carries mockery. ‘Sir’ snaps like a slap in the face, more so than ‘monsieur,’ I think.
“I also wanted to stay close to the play, especially the excessive politeness between Horn and Alboury. This politeness is angry, frustrated, sometimes even hateful. It itself marks a boundary – a fence,” says Denis.
Talking about casting Matt Dillon, she says, “I told Isaach about the project early on, and he waited two years. I already knew Matt Dillon, a friend of Isaach’s. I ran into him by chance one day in Paris. He reminded me that he had long wanted us to work together. I gave him an early draft of the screenplay, and he immediately said yes, even though the project was still vague,” says the filmmaker.
“But The Fence responds, above all, to a promise I made to Koltès,” she concludes.
