Screening times:
Saturday, August 15, 8:30 PM

Claire Denis | France | 2000 | 90 mins
French, Italian and Russian with English subtitles

Men, By Women is our August Retrospective Series, screening Saturday nights at 8:30 PM. Masculinity perceived, portrayed and perforated by female directors! Serving up: Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow), Beau Travail (Claire Denis) and You Were Never Really Here (Lynn Ramsey).

Often described as a cinematic ballet, Beau Travail is directed by Claire Denis (Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, Trouble Every Day) as a loose adaptation of the novella Billy Budd by Herman Melville.

Almost dialogue-free, Beau Travail follows a section of French Foreign Legion soldiers training in the desert of Djibouti. Speaking on the physicality of the film Denis said, "One of the cast had actually been in the Legion, so we took all their real exercises and did them together every day, to concentrate the actors as a group. We never said we were going to choreograph the film. But afterwards, when we started shooting, those exercises became like a dance." Beau Travail is currently ranked the 7th best movie of all time by Sight and Sound; film scholar Erika Balsom has written that it has "perhaps the best ending of any film, ever."

“Her masterpiece, 'Beau Travail', is a grand act of vulture adaptation, taking what it needs from its source material and leaving the rest to rot in the sun.” - A.A. Dowd, AV Club

“She succeeds in fusing the real and the dreamlike, the naturalistic and the figurative, into one visual conceit. Never for one moment does this shimmering, simmering emotional desert storm of a film relax its grip on your senses.” - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Tickets $12 ($11.40 at the door if available)