Sightlines · reception
How Beau Travail was received
2000 · Claire Denis · Beau Travail on Sightlines
The arc
A festival-circuit critics' darling in 1999 that mainstream audiences barely saw, it has since climbed higher than almost any film of its era — all the way to #7 on Sight & Sound's 2022 greatest-films-of-all-time poll, the highest-ranked film directed by a woman in the poll's history.
What’s debated
The perennial fight: is the whole film transcendent, or is it a slow, plotless 80 minutes redeemed by the greatest final scene ever shot?
Its footprint
Denis Lavant's solo dance to Corona's 'Rhythm of the Night' is one of the most referenced, clipped, and imitated endings in cinema — a Eurodance banger permanently rewired by an arthouse film. Barry Jenkins has cited Claire Denis and this film as a touchstone, notably for Moonlight.
Where it stands
A capital-C canon film and a Letterboxd holy text — the 'you must have seen this' entry point to Claire Denis.
Did you know? Michel Subor plays a commander named Bruno Forestier — the same character he played 36 years earlier in Godard's Le Petit Soldat, a deliberate resurrection by Denis.
Named by the director
- Le Petit Soldat (1963) — Denis deliberately carried over Godard's protagonist Bruno Forestier, casting Michel Subor to reprise the character decades later.