Claire Denis's Un beau soleil intérieur, being set in Paris, is far removed from her colonial African films, is freely adapted from Roland Barthes's Fragments d'un discours amoureux (1977), and is co-written by Denis and Christine Angot. Denis loves the word 'Agony' (written in English), which is used as a way of beginning the screenplay. The word was seen as a kind of magic, of fantasy: in a way, it was the theme of their own 'agonies amoureuses' that set off the writing.
Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) can't find love. There's (bad) sex from the unbearable, egotistical and married banker Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), who treats her like shit, as he treats barmen. Then there's the neurotic actor with a drink problem (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who regrets sleeping with her. There's Sylvain (Paul Blain), fellow artist (Alex Descas), but no go. Isabelle seems to be losing it when she asks a taxi driver about his happiness. And finally, as fortune teller, there's Gérard Depardieu, who talks a great deal, almost seems to be proposing something with Isabelle, and mentions the expression which provides the title to the film: the film credits rolling by as he finishes his prattle is super.
Very amusing this film certainly is, although by no means everyone appears to have grasped the humour, seeing it as very bleak, which it is at the same time, but then romcom it certainly isn't.
This is Claire Denis's first featur film, which has strong autobiographical elements and bears some resemblances to White Material, although the later film is much bleaker and is set in an unnamed African country. Chocolat though is set in the final days of Cameroon as a French colony. 'Être chocolat' is an expression meaning to be duped.
France Dalens (Mireille Perrier) walks along a road in French Cameroon, where her father Marc (François Cluzet) was an administrator, and is given a lift to Douala. Then begins the long flashback to when France (now played by Cécile Ducasse) is a young child, with her father and her mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi) and the 'boy' Protée (Isaach de Bankolé), to whom she relates very well.
The film is slow, colourful, languid, much is left unspoken, and the sexual tension between Aimée and Protée is almost tangible until it reaches a non-sexual climax.
Claire Denis's Beau travail is set in Djibouti with a group of legionnaires under the command of Galoup (Denis Lavant), warrant officer first class. It was inspired by Herman Melville's short story Billy Budd, with which it shares a number of similarities. Above all, this film is a celebration of the male body, with men practicing exercises, almost dancing a ballet and embracing one another, but then visiting night clubs in search of women, or conversely ironing, sweeping, drying clothes and peeling potatoes.
The homosocial tones inevitably give way to homosexual ones, but of course these are only suggested, tweaked out by the images: needless to say, there are very few words in the film, such as in a night club where the music drowns out the spoken word.
What this comes down to is a disgraced officer's memories of a platoon in the desert. Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin) is a new recruit, and a very handsome one. He fills Galoup with jealousy due to his repressed homosexual desire and the fact that the commander of the base, Bruno Forrestier (Michel Subor)*, has noted Sentain's noble actions. And Galoup will send Sentain out into the desert with a defective compass, leading to Galoup's court marshalling.
*Michel Subor (as Bruno Forrestier) starred in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Petit Soldat (1963), in which he deserted to Switzerland and joined an extreme right-wing group.
This film is written by both Claire Denis and Marie NDiaye. It brings to mind Denis's first film Chocolat (1988), although it's not set in any specific place, just an unnamed country in Africa where a civil war between the government and the rebels (including children) is being waged.
In a way, the protagonist conjures up Isabelle Huppert's performance in the film adaptation of Marguerite Duras's eponymous novel Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950), which was directed by Rithy Panh in 2008. Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) lives on the coffee plantation of her ex-father-in-law Henri (Michel Subor) and her ex-husband André (Christophe Lambert), alone with her psychologically disturbed son Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle) and now the rebel officer 'Le Boxeur' (Isaach de Bankolé). Due to the imminent danger all her workers have fled but she remains stubbornly waiting for the crop to be harvested and recruits workers from another farm to fulfil the work. The tension mounts, the death count rises, she is advised to move out, but Maria stands her ground, as if waiting stoically for a death sentence.
Manuel is attacked, stripped naked by young rebels and goes mad, shaving his head with revenge in his eyes, much like Travis Bickles (Robert De Niro) in Scorsese's Taxi Driver. The violence continues to grow.
The title of the film obviously relates to white people's goods, as well as the white people in this country. The atmosphere is very bleak, foreboding, the scenes non-sequential, and with a soundtrack by Tindersticks this is quite devastating.
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