Forms of Beauty

Abstract

This article approaches Claire Denis’s filmBeau Travail by way, first, of a passage in Alan Hollinghurst’s novelThe Folding Star; then, more extensively, of the theoretical and art-critical writings of Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit - especially their critique of narrative and desire as aggressive and appropriative strategies.Beau Travail is argued to give support to the contention that there are other, nonappropriative modes of existence and intersubjectivity: thoughBeau Travail is concerned with repression (especially the repression of homosexuality) it also may be said to depict a mode of being which is not crippled by jealousy, repression and coercive desire.