Beau Travail

Director: Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis

1999 / 92min / DCP

Military drills take on the aspect of sacred pagan rites in Denis’s breathtaking, sun-struck study of men (almost) without women, a loose reworking of Melville (and Benjamin Britten’s) Billy Budd set in Djibouti amidst a French Foreign Legion detachment training endlessly for a martial challenge that will never come. With Grégoire Colin as the beautiful boy soldier, and Denis Lavant as the brooding, suppressed superior officer fixated on his charge, who finally self-immolates in one of the greatest closing shots of all time.