UNDER THE SKIN: THE FILMS OF CLAIRE DENIS Beau travail, March 25, April 1 Chocolat, March 4 Photo courtesy New Yorker Films nowhere, where he’s been for a number of years. Wings of Desire). Denis doesn’t flinch in depicting The work of Claire Denis begins with what FRIDAY MARch 4 Travis tentatively reunites with his young son, brutality, toward either the cocks or their keepers. she calls “tactile intuition.” Her films feel 7:00 White Material Hunter, and together they hit the road in search of “Men, cocks: same thing,” says Dah; for both, life is their way through charged situations and Claire Denis (France, 2009) the boy’s mother; the dream of making the family a fight that can end only one way.—Juliet Clark complex relationships—cultural, familial, whole again finds its nightmare edge when Mom • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Denis’s latest film returns to the West African set- sexual—by attending to the textures and (Nastassja Kinski) is found working in a peep show. Agnès Godard. With Isaach de Bankolé, Alex Descas, Solveig ting of her first, Chocolat, but replaces the restraint Still, Travis persists, reaching her on her own terms: Dommartin, Christopher Buchholz. (91 mins, In French with rhythms of the physical world and to the of that period piece with an apocalyptic vision of the through glass. Robby Müller’s cinematography pur- English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Pathé) ways that people move through it. This is postcolonial present. Isabelle Huppert brings char- sues a fantasy of the American West in capturing a corporeal cinema: Denis once asserted, acteristic clenched ferocity to the role of Maria Vial, its more bizarre reality, much as Travis and Hunter FRIDAY MARch 25 “capturing bodies on film is the only thing the proprietor of a coffee plantation in an unnamed pursue a fantasy of the American family amid the 7:00 Nénette and Boni that interests me.” country that is collapsing into civil war. Delusionally choked violence of the one they have.—Judy Bloch resolute in her attachment to her African home, Claire Denis (France, 1996) Born in Paris in 1948, Denis spent her child- • Written by Sam Shepard. Adapted by L. M. Kit Carson. Maria refuses to join other white residents who (Nénette et Boni). Abandoned by their father and hood in various African nations where her Photographed by Robby Müller. With Harry Dean Stanton, are fleeing to France. “Dirty whites . they don’t Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clement. (145 bereft of their mother who recently died, nineteen- father was a French colonial functionary. deserve this beautiful land,” she says; but who mins, Color, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion Collection) year-old Boni (Grégoire Colin) and his younger Several of her most acclaimed films, from does deserve it? The child soldiers swarming around sister Nénette (Alice Houri) are barely on speaking her debut feature Chocolat to Beau travail the rebel known as the Boxer (Isaach de Bankolé)? SUNDAY MARch 6 terms, with life or with each other. Boni, a pizza- and the recent White Material, are set in Or Maria’s own son, who awakens from privileged maker in his better moments, has turned his moth- 3:00 I Can’t Sleep Africa, and a concern with colonialism and lassitude into a delirious racial fury? Shuffling anx- er’s Marseilles apartment into a space for sexual Claire Denis (France/Switzerland, 1994) its aftereffects runs through much of her iously beautiful images into a fragmented flashback fantasy—in fine French film form, he lusts after the work. But her approach to this and other structure, Denis suggests a vivid but unstable real- (J’ai pas sommeil). Denis’s dispassionate approach baker’s wife, buns and all, a woman whose good- ity, as though in Maria’s ruptured world, not only subjects is less political or even psychologi- to a Parisian murder-noir makes Claude Chabrol natured sensuality is the polar opposite of his own. times but time itself had changed.—Juliet Clark look like an emotional wreck. Daïga (Katerina When Nénette runs away from boarding school, cal than emotional and experiential; expo- • Written by Denis, Marie N’Diaye. Photographed by Yves Golubeva), having arrived from Lithuania with seven months pregnant, the siblings circle around sition is pared away, leaving impressions Cape. With Isabelle Huppert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Isaach de minimal French and had her hopes for a theatrical each other like wary strays. As James Quandt put whose full meaning emerges only with the Bankolé, William Nadylam. (102 mins, In French with English career quickly dashed, works as a chambermaid in it, “Les enfants terribles [are] faced with the ter- subtitles, Color, 35mm, From IFC Films) passage of time. a small hotel near Sacré Coeur. Camille (Richard rifying prospect of becoming les parents terribles.” Courcet), a black transvestite, carries on his affairs Nénette and Boni Beau travail Denis served a long apprenticeship before 9:00 Chocolat anticipates in its pal- under the mothering eye of the hotel owner, while ette of blinding white sunlight and striking blues. It directing her own films, beginning as an Claire Denis (France/W. Germany, 1988) elsewhere in the quartier, Camille’s brother Théo may be the Mediterranean, but as the song says, assistant on Dušan Makavejev’s Sweet BAM/PFA Student Committee Pick (Alex Descas), a jazz musician, has given up on “tiny tears make up an ocean.”—Judy Bloch Movie (1974) and later working as an Paris and threatens to return to Martinique with assistant director to Jim Jarmusch and Wim For her first film, Denis re-created two lost worlds: • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by colonial Cameroon in the 1950s, and the familiar his child. With a thriving gay underground and a Agnès Godard. With Grégoire Colin, Alice Houri, Valeria Bruni- Wenders. This retrospective includes her Tedeschi, Vincent Gallo. (103 mins, In French with English yet foreign territory of childhood. Framed as the rec- burgeoning immigrant population, the eighteenth films with those two directors, as well as subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Strand Releasing) ollections of a grown woman, Chocolat draws on the arrondissement is also home to many old ladies the fruits of her long collaborations with cin- who have lived there for ages. Everyone wonders director’s own early years, and it has all the sensory 9:00 ematographer Agnès Godard, writer Jean- who is killing and robbing them as they come home Beau travail acuity and strangeness of memory. The point-of-view Claire Denis (France, 1999) Pol Fargeau, and actor Alex Descas (whom character, pointedly named France, is the daughter with their groceries—everyone but Camille and his Good Work she has described as her “muse”). Here is of a colonial officer at a remote outpost; her clos- lover. Based on the “Granny Killer” case of 1987, ( ). A story of French Legionnaires isolat- a chance to experience a body of work that est companion is Protée (Isaach de Bankolé), the Denis’s film opens up more riddles than it solves, ed in a blisteringly beautiful African setting (Djibouti Beau travail both exerts and rewards alert observation. household’s black “boy,” who serves not only as mysteries of intention and desire.—Judy Bloch and surrounds), evokes Camus’s The Stranger Billy helper and protector but also as a vector for the • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Agnès as much as it does Melville’s Juliet Clark Godard. With Katerina Golubeva, Richard Courcet, Vincent Budd white characters’ various desires and delusions. The , on which it is abstractly based. This is the C ONTRI B U T I N G F I L M N O T E S W RITER Dupont, Alex Descas. (110 mins, In French and Russian Legion of the 1990s, superfluous to anything but film’s quiet beauty, in thrall to the landscape, could with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, permission Pyramide suggest a current of nostalgia, but Denis carefully International) its almost spiritual rituals of loyalty and rigor. The complicates matters. The ending executes a grace- rigor is played out in dancelike exercises and in ful shift in perspective, reminding us that France is simple activities like the pressing of a uniform into SUNDAY MARch 20 elegant creases. But loyalty, as in Melville, is a SEriES CUraTED BY SUsaN OXTOBY. PFA wishES TO not the center of the universe.—Juliet Clark 3:00 No Fear, No Die complex of suppressed eroticism and violence, as ThaNK THE FOllOwiNG INDIVIDUals AND INSTITUTIONS • Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Photographed by Agnès Godard. With Isaach de Bankolé, Giulia Boschi, François Claire Denis (France, 1990) Sgt. Galoup (Denis Lavant) indulges a paranoid, FOR THEir assisTANCE wiTH This RETROspECTIVE: Harris irrational hatred for a beautiful young recruit, Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin. (105 mins, In French with English (S’en fout la mort). “All human beings, of whatever DEW, IFC CENTER, NEW YORK CITY; CULTUREsFraNCE, subtitles, Color, 35mm, From The Film Desk) Sentain (Grégoire Colin), who he imagines will kill race or nationality or religious belief or ideology, FrENch MINisTRY OF FOREIGN AFFairs, Paris; DElphiNE the commanding officer, Forester (Michel Subor). In will do anything and everything.” An epigraph from SEllES, FrENch CULTUral SERVicE, SAN FraNciscO; this film Denis effectively hypnotizes us, transform- SATURDAY MARch 5 Chester Himes sounds an appropriate note of pulp ing what is, after all, a detachment of unemployed JONAThaN HOWEll, NEW YORKER Films; Sarah FiNKLEA philosophy for this underworld allegory, a stark and 7:15 Paris, Texas boys who have fled France for a colonial nether- AND BriaN BELOVarac, JANUS Films; JAKE PErliN, gritty follow-up to the stately Chocolat.