White on White review – troubling examination of colonialism

Though rich with formal merit and displaying a willingness to grapple with difficult ideas, it is hard to outright recommend a film like Théo Court’s White on White. Filled with strong performances and memorable scenes, this tale of colonial genocide on the edge of the world and the dawning of the 20th century is undoubtably troubling in its approach.

Pedro (Alfredo Castro) is a photographer who is dispatched to the remote tundra of Tierra del Fuega in South America, where he has been hired by unseen landowner Mr. Porter to produce portraits of Sara (Esther Vega), Porter’s child bride. When Pedro’s erotic fixation on the girl gets him into trouble with his employer, he finds another job accompanying European mercenaries to document their extermination of the Indigenous Selk’nam people in the region.

Right away the film takes things to a dark place with Sara sitting for Pedro in a prolonged scene of nauseating tension. Vega communicates a sense of seething rage through looks alone, as Castro’s timidity possesses a sketchy undercurrent with each direction he gives to this child clad in a bridal dress.

From this point, every aspect of the film contributes to a mounting dread. The action takes place against barren landscapes that are mostly peopled by a smattering of rifle-toting white men. Flaking paint on the wood panel walls of the interiors reflect the moral decay of the white characters. A sparse soundscape, with a minimal score, is coupled to a crawling pace that allows the atmosphere to accumulate.

Court, together with his co-writers Samuel M. Delgado and Laure Desmazières, ably connect Sara’s exploitation to the genocide of the Selk’nam people, highlighting the violence European culture inflicts upon itself while also unleashing it out into the wider world.

One of the risks when examining historical trauma through a perpetrator’s perspective is that it can reduce the victims of violence to mute objects, while causing the audience to over-identify with said perpetrator. This is evident in Waltz with Bashir with its portrayal of the Sabra and Shatila massacre and more recently in Moffie’s depiction of apartheid-era South Africa. In White on White, the Indigenous characters do not speak, are often seen as faceless corpses, and the women are routinely subjected to sexual violence.

Any attempt to morally condemn the film on this basis is complicated, however, by Pedro’s role as a photographer, which imbues the film with a certain self-reflexivity. Some of the most disturbing shots come as Pedro’s camera stares directly into the film's own camera, linking this historical story to the present moment. Child sexual exploitation and the murder of Indigenous people for capitalist gain are still rampant today. The camera’s significant place within White on White therefore implicates visual media past and present in enabling these atrocities, while also calling into question its ability to meaningfully combat them.

In its uncompromisingly dour approach, White on White risks engendering passive apathy in the viewer. Yet there is a real thoughtfulness in the film's construction that makes for fascinating, if disconcerting, viewing.

White on White is now showing on MUBI.