Beau Travail
Claire Denis's BEAU TRAVAIL follows the retired Foreign Legionnaire Galoup as he strictly commands his unit in Djibouti, East Africa. When the charismatic soldier Sentain joins the team, Galoup is consumed by destructive jealousy. The film’s precise military choreographies and the rugged beauty of the desert landscapes, combined with long, meditative takes, create a reflection on the fragility of masculinity. Agnès Godard’s subtle use of color and lighting captures the physical presence and intensity of the soldiers, while tenderly reflecting on the psychology of isolation and the tension between self-fulfillment and military discipline within a rigid system.
Denis employs a minimalist color palette of soft blues, turquoise, and grays, blending seascapes and desert views. This creates a surface of calm, clarity, and coolness beneath which tension begin to arise. The blue hues enhance the film’s soberingly meditative mood, while effectively highlighting the characters' self-alienation and estrangement from themselves.
Supporting Film: Arabesque for Kenneth Anger
While traveling through Spain with fellow filmmaker Kenneth Anger in 1958, Menken shot this work in a single day at the Alhambra, a fortress complex in Granada. Later she added composer Teiji Ito’s soundtrack of classical guitar, castanets, and hand clapping; the percussive rhythm intensifies the alternating flashes of graphic patterning and long panning shots that trace the Moorish buildings’ ornate curvature. Menken’s experimentation with movement was innovative, the filmmaker Stan Brakhage recounted: “This is one of the first films that took full advantage of the enormous freedom of the hand-held camera. In the history of cinema up to that time, Marie’s was the most free-floating hand-held camera short of newsreel catastrophe shots.”
