Abstract
<JATS1:p>Beau Travail(1998) is Claire Denis' bold, sensuous masterpiece. Loosely based on Herman Melville’sBilly Budd, Sailor(1924),the film explores the complexities of desire, identity, and power within an all-male group of French Foreign Legionnaires stationed at a coastal outpost in the former colony of Djibouti, in East Africa.</JATS1:p> <JATS1:p>The film cemented Denis' position as a leading auteur and visual poet. In this book, Corinn Columpar positions the film as a cinematic bid for freedom. She examines its formal innovations - particularly the use of the gaze, voice, and movement - to explain how Denis produces exhilarating possibilities narratively, affectively, and ideologically, while also situating the film within the histories of art cinema and postcolonial filmmaking.</JATS1:p>