The Cosford Cinema is proud to present a screening series of the top 10 films of the 2022 Sight & Sound Top 100 Poll: The Greatest Films of All Time.
BEAU TRAVAIL | YEAR: 1999 | DIRECTOR: Claire Denis | 4K DCP projection | RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes | RATED: Unrated (adult themes) | In French with English subtitles
With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,” Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.
Admission is $5 for the general public, free to UM students with Cane Card (use code UMSTUDENT at checkout).