Dir. Claire Denis

The Rustic Theatre
Sunday 22nd, September
6.00 – 8.00 PM

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Claire Denis’s rapturous exploration of male identity in crisis, is set in a remote African outpost in a former French colony. Here a battalion of Foreign Legionnaires spend their days enacting gruelling training regimes on desert terrain. Commander Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) is admired by his men; less so is his solitary second-in-command Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant). Galoup is more interested in being “the perfect legionnaire” than in being popular – at least until the arrival of sweet-natured new recruit Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin) Sentain’s good naturedness disrupts Galoup in a way he himself cannot fully understand, as “Something vague and menacing” takes hold of him.

At the time Beau Travail came out, male identity was having a post-feminist, post-industrial cinematic crisis, resulting in querying classics such as Fight Club and American Beauty. In Beau Travail the French Foreign Legion that once offered a stereotypically masculine escape fantasy, is rendered impotent as a near-defunct colonial outpost.

Movement, gesture and glance reveal at least as much as dialogue this near-ballet of a film, that is as much a work of choreography as of verbal storytelling. 

The intensity of Galoup’s obsession with Sentain mimics the symptoms of love, manifest in rage, and  Denis has been criticised for appropriating a perspective not her own – that of a closeted gay man, but the fact that Denis is herself a woman, and was working in this case with a female cinematographer and editor, Agnès Godard and Nelly Quettier respectively, further layers Beau Travail’s position on masculinity. 

Beau Travail does frankly foreground male beauty, and it can reasonably be argued that the sexual perspective of Beau Travail is through the female gaze, and that some of the discomfort it has stirred is down to its unusual standing as a film about men primarily authored by women.

This audacious, elegant and unfixable ‘beautiful work’ remains one of cinema’s most compelling and original meditations on masculinity and intimacy.

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CLAIRE DENIS

Claire Denis has occupied a unique place in contemporary cinema for more than 30 years. She has directed a compelling body of work, including 13 feature films. A true adventurer, she has established her taste for observation and experimentation throughout her artistic journeys, navigating between introspection and openness to the world.

Other films include her semi-autobiographical debut Chocolat (1998), White Material (2010), With No Fear, No Die (1990), I Can’t Sleep (1994), Nénette and Boni (1996) and 35 Shots of Rums (2008), Claire Denis explores a cinema of the margins and the heartlands where connections between people are in constant evolution. She is also attached to filming things forbidden, as seen in Trouble Every Day (Midnight Screening, 2001) or Bastards (Un Certain Regard, 2013).

Always daring, always free, Claire Denis has never stopped reforming the paths between the unknown and the familiar up to her latest High Life (2018), in which the power of her direction and expertise in the ellipsis were reinventing science fiction.

WOMEN & FILM

Women & Film is a curated film community founded by Natalie Falt. Ultimately, their mission is to further the discussion and implement action surrounding the image and representation of women on screen and in media.  Women & Film host monthly screenings as well as FFFEST (female filmmakers festival), workshops, and film related events.