Herman Melville

With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of the time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant sows the seeds of his ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten.