When you look at any film by Claire Denis, beside all her thematic richness, socioeconomic inquisitiveness, and formal rigor, what stands out the most might the tactility of the bodies on screen. From the performances she extracts from her actors to their physicality within the frame; the way in which a body—or the shadow of a body—moves from one space to the next, the motion of an arm, the contours of a stretching neck.

This is true for almost all her work, whether it is the carnal violence of Trouble Every Day (2001), the heavy weightlessness of High Life (2018), the sun-drenched White Material (2009). Yet, it is not without reason that Beau Travail is consistently regarded as one of her best.

At the center of the film is officer Galoup (the always extraordinary Denis Lavant) of the French Foreign Legion, where him and his legionnaires exist in a sort of transient space where their strict and regimented routines are rarely or never interrupted by external forces. Yet, when a new recruit arrives (played by the always intoxicating Grégoire Colin), the harmony is disrupted by states of jealousy and tension. Set under the scorching sun of the Gulf of Djibouti, the repression of desires, emotions, and connections between all these men are filtered through the fragmented memory of their officer. Their hyper-masculinity constantly reverberating through each scene and interaction as their bodies and the shadows of their bodies are burnt into the white sands of Djibouti.