Film: Beau Travail

Tickets: $8 

1999; directed by Claire Denis; screenplay by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau

In what is universally considered its director’s most powerful film to date, Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd has been imaginatively transposed to a French Foreign Legion outfit in Djibouti. Denis’s collaboration with choreographer Bernardo Montet and cinematographer Agnès Godard creates a dreamlike atmosphere, aided by the use of haunting excerpts from Benjamin Britten’s opera, Billy Budd. French (subtitled). 92 minutes.