Beau Travail

Claire Denis adds a new visual dimension to her work with this lyrical adaptation of Herman Melville’s allegorical Billy Budd, which shifts from the battling British navy of 1797 to the superfluous French Foreign Legion of 1999. On the African coast, in a nameless country of paradisiacal beauty and hellish poverty, a detachment of legionnaires—all young, poorly educated, and fleeing France’s dismal economy—punish themselves with drills and training rituals to fight boredom. Numbed by the pointless routine, Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant, best known as Léos Carax’s alter ego in Boy Meets Girl and The Lovers on the Bridge) conceives an irrational hatred for Sentain (Grégoire Colin, The Dreamlife of Angels), a new recruit whose innate goodness perversely strikes Galoup as an affront. Denis films their conflict as if it were a displaced love affair, framing Galoup’s growing obsession within a homoerotic athletic display that suggests Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia. A sexual consummation is out of the question, and another resolution must be found. While little happens on the surface, Denis’s intense concentration and Agnès Godard’s dry, clear cinematography make Beau Travail hypnotic and suspenseful. —Dave Kehr

Claire Denis appeared at The Festival with the film when it screened in 2000.

Films from the Vault revisits previously presented titles at the San Francisco International Film Festival, highlighting the Festival’s role in championing emerging artists and iconic auteurs and inviting audiences to rediscover these films anew. —Jessie Fairbanks