The trivial objective of Claire Denis’ 2005 documentary, Vers Mathilde, was to follow dancer/choreographer Mathilde Monnier through the enigmatic steps involved in the creation, rehearsal, and performance of a production titled Deroutes, but below the unassuming surface lies a nu... Read More »
“Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.” So said Bram Stoker in Dracula, that endlessly influential exemplar of Gothic fiction that defined the vampire in its modern form. Science, Stoker u... Read More »
Nénette and Boni is arguably a sequel to U.S. Go Home (1994), Claire Denis’ contribution to the French television series Tous les garcons et les filles de leur age (1993), for several reasons. One, the themes of adolescence and explorations of the body, intimacy, and desire betwe... Read More »
The films of Claire Denis exist in a realm outside our own, eschewing traditional narrative and even, to a large extent, dialogue in favor of an impressionistic sense of time, place, and character. Her approach is in some sense seductive, but always like a dream, full of moments,... Read More »
The characters director Claire Denis follows in her film I Can’t Sleep all seem afflicted with the ailments common to modern urban dwellers: isolation, loneliness, ennui. They navigate their lives in Paris in such a way as to avoid contact with others; when physical avoidance pr... Read More »
A great film is like flowing prose: all the elements must coalesce in order to elicit an emotion or provoke an internal discussion among its audience. Film as art must move and internalize its objective within the viewer to make it worth the time the viewer gives to it. Claire De... Read More »
During a classroom debate in one of French filmmaker Claire Denis’s finer films, 35 Shots of Rum, the main character addresses that “debt can be discussed without getting full of emotion, but precisely, rigorously, and technically.” You feel that sensibility, especially visually,... Read More »
Claire Denis has the unique ability to expose the hidden poetry lurking beneath the seedy layers of any context. She traverses the full extent of what man is capable of in her controversial exploration of the secret world of underground cockfighting in No Fear, No Die, finding m... Read More »
From the first, Claire Denis’ film Beau Travail presents itself as a story of sparse power, as stripped down as the shirtless soldiers that populate its field of vision. It is one of those rare, remarkable films that combines the physical and metaphysical in meaningful ways, lin... Read More »
With Bastards (2013), critically acclaimed female auteur Claire Denis presents a complex, enigmatic, yet frustrating film. Alluring for its mystery and ambiguity, the film teases out its history until its final moments. Parts of the narrative are implied, imperceptible, and must ... Read More »
