“Beau Travail” (2000)
This is the imposing masterwork of Claire Denis‘ illustrious career—an adaptation of Herman Melville‘s “Billy Budd” which relocates the story’s action to a French legionnaire camp in Northern Africa where jealousy and braggadocio inform an intense power struggle and elevate a classic parable to the level of Greek tragedy. In the opening scene, the film’s two protagonists, Sentain (Gregoire Colin) and Galoup (Denis Lavant), circle each other like predators; the soldiers are established as silent rivals through intense physical gestures: penetrating stares, arched backs, and clenched fists. Denis’ surreal rendering of their harsh environment blurs the line between masculinity and unspoken homoerotic tension, just as it makes ambiguous the separation between regimented exercise and interpretive dance. This director’s cinema is all about suggestion—erotic tension abounds but there’s no release. Denis focuses not on action, but inaction here: the soldiers rehearse tirelessly for a battle that never comes, and that hypothetical threat, looming in some potential future, infuses “Beau Travail” with a wellspring of unnerving tension. But Denis’ interests extend beyond the blows traded between her two brooding ciphers; setting the film in Djibouti hints at the pointed critique of “Chocolat,” her exceptionally underrated debut: that dark-skinned people often become casualties to the senseless whims and conflicts of white egotists.
“Trouble Every Day” (2002)
Unfortunately the title “The Hunger” is taken, but it does a solid job emphasizing the carnal rage with which Denis’ sojourn into more horrific territory is concerned. Along the French countryside, a curvy animalistic nymphomaniac (Béatrice Dalle) can’t help but devour her lovers, held back by the dutiful concern of her male paramour. At the same time, two Americans (Vincent Gallo and uber-cute and underused Tricia Vessey) struggle to understand how they’ve arrived at this place of sensual longing and flesh-eating scientifically, while at the same time struggling with how their passions seem both exactly the same, and, because of a lack of compatibility, completely opposite to their interests. “Trouble Every Day” is a gory test for the average arthouse consumer, but it continues Denis’ sensuous obsession with the matters of the flesh and the chasm that separates even the most dedicated of lovers. It also boasts a solid score by the Tindersticks.
“Friday Night” (2003)
It’s easy to look at “Vendredi Soir” and mistake it for a slight piece of work, and after the lush tragedy of “Beau Travail” and the dark cannibalism of “Trouble Every Day,” it’s undeniably a change of pace, and possibly Denis’ lightest, funniest work to date. But in this case, ‘light’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘frothy.’ It follows Laure (a wonderful Valerie Lemercier), who’s about to move in with her boyfriend, but gets stuck in traffic during a transport strike. She picks up a hitchhiker (Vincent Lindon, the lead in “Pour Elle,” the original version of this week’s Paul Haggis thriller “The Next Three Days“), and the two almost immediately develop a very, very deep connection. What’s particularly impressive (and what separates it from the likes of “Before Sunrise,” which is essentially dialogue-driven) is how little is said in the course of the film — it’s an almost impossibly intimate, detailed film, revolving around little gestures and snatched images familiar to anyone who’s had the kind of one-night-only connection shown here, the kind that you never quite forget. It’s got to be one of the all-time great city movies too, capturing a Paris that’s as suffocating as it is vibrant. Denis and regular DoP Agnes Godard (who, as strong as Yves Cape is, was much missed on “White Material“) shoot the hell out of it, and the score’s gorgeous as well. It might be a minor work, but if every director’s minor-key films were as good as this, it’d be a wonderful thing.