The mysterious story from the environment of the French legions is one of the pinnacles of Claire Denis and Agnès Godard’s production. This free adaptation of Herman Melville’s final novel Billy Bud, Sailor, centres around Galoup (Denis Lavant), who is tasked to train a troop of young soldiers. However, he is sure one of them shouldn’t be there. The story is fragmented, the training in the desert almost dreamlike and the film has a tinge of ancient tragedy. Denis and Godard are turning the “traditional” view of a military unit around, the most prominent evidence of which is the shots of training. A female gaze at a male body.