If the concept of desperation could be rendered visually, it would look something like Claire Denis’ White Material.

Few directors are as adept at doing so much with so little as Claire Denis. She proves it once again with her latest, 35 Shots of Rum, a film that, instead of going from beginning to end, starts somewhere in the middle, and ends just a little farther down the line. Denis recognizes that the stories of our lives rarely have definitive starts and finishes – apart from birth and death – and constructs…