Beau Travail (Denis, 1999)

The moment when it hits, you'll know. When everything comes together into formation. A crystallization of form, content, and perspective into a hardened diamond of pure aesthetical poetry. Where narrative seems to dissolve into the ether of a piece. Character is reduced into bodies moving into, past, against one another. Shapes crisscrossing. 

Not so much a work of montage (ala Mann's Ali) but a work of refinement of style. If Denis managed to hit upon her trademark, free-roaming camera gliding over bodies and landscapes with Anges Godard in her last film, Nénette and Boni, then here she finds their groove. The pocket in which their work becomes wholly singular to them and them alone. The masculine physical form rendered into poses akin to Roman and Greek statues. Posturing and posing before our eyes. Perhaps not since Leni Riefenstahl's Olympus films has the male form been so stunningly captured. Admiring but also distant, knowing the violence that stirs beneath these boy-ish facades. 

A war film typically focuses on the events in said war. The violence created from man and machine - bullets being fired colliding with the flesh, bombs detonating, etc. etc. But very few focus on the actual conflicts - man against man (not in a strictly gendered way, to be clear). The violence of two bodies, two personalities clashing in the field. Thrown about in fury. What is the actual war? Such mundanities that occupy the life of a soldier and ultimately cause friction between them. 

But these soldiers also occupy a space that does not rightfully belong to them. In theory, a soldier should be stationed out to protect whatever public from some sort of threat, but the only threat is from these very soldiers themselves. What is their purpose? To occupy the area. To fill a quota on a base. Safety for the public means frustration for those who have been hardened by the war(s) they have survived. One must challenge and demonstrate dominance over others as a form of perseverance in the face of boredom. Your right to exist isn't challenged (in this instance) but your right to land is.

Nenette and Boni (Denis, 1996)

An extension of sorts, from US Go Home, in both her central cast as well as the youthful libido. Blossoming in its extravagance, revealing itself to be both incredibly tender and unassuming as well as ferocious and troublesome. But it's never handled in a less than gentle way. Denis' eye here begins to showcase the sensuality that her work is so well known and praised for. Her attention to movement, the shapes of bodies, has finally started to reveal itself here. 

The way she tracks bodies moving. From room to room, inside a given space, short bursts of movement against longueurs of life. Emotions presented so straightforwardly against the realism of the performances. Everything is on the verge of breaking, but its fragility has one (Denis) capture it gently and with as little sentimentalism as possible. Yet so much of this is captured in close-ups. It's the first of her films that feels so deliberately close. If it wasn't so lovingly captured it'd be incredibly uncomfortable to view some of the scenes within. 

Perhaps because this is so explicitly about sexuality and family bonds that this can seem somewhat myopic by comparison to the films which came before it. The whole can seem rather insular, though Denis' attention to class dynamics is still very central to her whole process here. No one here has the capital to do much of anything beyond their means, nor does that really factor much into their goals. Monetary troubles only factor in when an unintended pregnancy arrives. Beyond that, to live and to work (and to fuck) is to live a life to the best one can. Though there is recurring desire for escape and hope for a better life elsewhere, or at the very least, a better tomorrow.

US Go Home (Denis, 1994)

Youthful exuberance without the need for overstating the point. In America, it seems like cinema of the youth (the "coming-of-age" movie) feels the need to push it's characters into vulgarity for the sake of assuming some sort of adult-ness. It's certainly not untrue that children, especially teens, adopt or latch onto certain aspects of being an adult in order to assume an older quality to themselves - cursing, drinking, smoking, etc. But's it's always a put on. There's very little in the way of authenticity to these works. The assumption of these adult qualities feels less in tune with character/teen (desirable) identities and more in an attempt to appeal to as broad a base of the movie going public. To sound adult is to grasp at the teen-mid 20s demographic, thus reducing any actual personalities down into caricatures. Denis' presentation bares no such falseness. 

A teenager's desire for party, for sex, for drink - really attention seeking at its most base for, has been stereotyped into oblivion at this point. Denis' focus is less about the party as an end goal, a point of resolution or clarity for the film's characters, and more the party as a single moment in a long line of others. There will be other parties after this one. Its significance is not in its pivotalness but its linkage to what ultimately is more important. Significance is not necessarily the big moments that we think will linger in the moment of occurrence, but those that upon reflection may seem utterly insignificant at the time. 

Much has been, and will continue to be, made of how Denis utilizes dance sequences in her films. Moments of emotional and physical release. Unshackled from the confines their daily lives that bind them into states of recession, she allows freedom to be basked in bursts of energetic frisson. But when the fun is over the melancholy returns.