White Material -- Film Review

SAN FRANCISCO -- With "White Material," a taut, unforgettable film, French director Claire Denis returns to Africa but it's not the place she knew as a child or the comparatively innocent world of her debut feature, "Chocolat." Instead, the unnamed country where the film's story transpires is a ruined paradise overtaken by poverty and near mythic violence; human savagery has been unleashed and the unspeakable is primed to happen and does.