Beau Travail

This 1999 film from Claire Denis is terrific. It is sharp, beautiful, moving and tightly composed. Excellent.
The immediate thing to say is that this has been ripped off by 'The Hurt Locker', rather well as it happens, but the original here is best. We have a film of particular spairty and asceticism, with much less extraneous fringe than the two earlier Denis films 'I Can't Sleep' and 'Nenette and Boni'. This is also evident in the shots, as we have a starker colour scheme (though of course Denis' characteristic rough and busy style remains).
Denis mixes in two aspects to make this narrative. We have the wider shots of the rythmic, almost hypnotic drills. We have a feeling of alienation in these scenes, we have a feeling of montomy, alienation from one's own body. Then we come in for Denis' characteristic and sensuous close work. This dichotomy shows us the dichotomy at the centre of the film; that between the hard self-discipline and the inner, sensuous, almost homo erotic aspects. Denis is smart enough to blur the lines between the two aspects, with the vanity and the body fetishism spilling over from one to the other. The theme of an excess, of overflowing outside the symbolic order.
Then we have the final scene, of disco dancing, that is absolutely sensational. It beautifully ties up the film, in a sense tying up all that has gone before, in a way rising it above. It is beautifully austere, choreographed, a wonderful performance. Indeed, that actor's performance throughout is wonderfully smouldering, and there is a great 'openness' about Gregoire Colin.
Perhaps the film is so strict and tight as to almost want an extra twenty minutes, to see more of the characters (nothing new, but more of the same). Overall though, Denis' change works wonderfully, and we have an excellent movie.