FILM: BEAU TRAVAIL
1999, dir. Claire Denis
A loose retelling of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, the ravishingly sensual Beau Travail established director Claire Denis as one of the great visual poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. In the tense, tightly disciplined atmosphere of military life- sensuously photographed by frequent collaborator Agnès Godard- Denis found an ideal outlet for two career-long concerns: the quiet agony of repressing one’s emotions and the terror of finally letting loose in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.
