Claire Denis revisits her recurrent themes of the legacy of colonialism and the intricacy of racial relationships in this film, the title of which refers both to the cheap metal substituted for gold and to the French property owners in an unnamed African country convulsed by civil war. Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) is a coffee-plantation owner determined not to lose her crop. Stranded on the roadside, she gets a lift from strangers — in this case a busload of refugees fleeing the conflict. From there, events unfold kaleidoscopically in flashback and flashforward, mirroring the ongoing chaos, as Denis builds tension, pathos, and irony (it's more like a traditional horror story than her creepy 2001 vampire film, Trouble Every Day) in this allegory of the continent's tragic past and the present-day consequences.
