Beau Travail

+ intro by Sam Wigley, BFI News and Features Editor

Repressed violence and desire simmers beneath the surface of Claire Denis’ breathtaking visuals of male bodies and barren landscapes, capturing an unsettling failure to belong.

  • Director

    Claire Denis

  • With

    Denis Lavant, Grégoire Colin, Michel Subor

  • France 1998. 93min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    15

  • English subtitles

Among French Foreign Legionnaires stationed in the former colony of Djibouti, a triangle of jealousy and obsession develops. These elite, unmoored soldiers are redundant, guardians of a fallen empire, training for a battle that never comes. Denis draws from Melville’s novella and Britten’s operatic adaptation to entwine masculine and feminine, in spellbinding images from choreographed military exercises to household chores.

Ruby McGuigan

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