Beau Travail

I don’t think I have ever seen a piece of surrealist film-making as effective as the one-man dance party at the conclusion of Claire Denis’ Beau Travail.

It is optimized on every dimension: the surrealism comes out of nowhere; it sharply inverts the tone of the film; expresses the character in a way the character is constitutionally incapable of expressing himself; and both plays off of and releases a tension that we have been painfully watching build for 90 minutes. Mwah.