User Reviews

Claire Denis' loose adaptation of Herman Melville's "Billy Budd", changes the story from taking place on the ocean to the African country of Djibouti, an impoverished nation with an outpost for training of the French Foreign Legion. Ms. Denis, who spent part of her life in Africa, sees the similarities of both stories and together with her co-writer Jean-Pol Fargeau, set to show us how the Melville novel impressed her.

The group of legionnaires, we meet, are seen in different stages of their training. The men, who come from different walks of life, and countries, have nothing to do. The only entertainment for them is dancing with the local women in bars. Galoup, the second in command, of this outpost, is the narrator of the story. We realize he is telling the story from a civilian point of view since he is no longer a legionnaire.

The man in charge, Galoup, is a strange person. He starts noticing how one of his men, the mysterious Sentain, does everything he is assigned to do, and more. When a helicopter crashes and Sentain risks his life in order to save a pilot, the troop commander, Bruno Forrester, suddenly sees in Sentain an courageous man. Forrester also observes how Galoup reacts to Sentain's sudden recognition. It's the commander who tells Galoup that backstabbing doesn't fit in the Foreign Legion, but it's already too late. Galoup, who is consumed in his dislike for Sentain, takes his subordinate into the desert as a punishment, which unknown to him will backfire on him.

Claire Denis has amassed an interesting cast to give life to her vision. Agnes Godard, the cinematographer has shot the film showing us great vistas of Djibouti and the Golf of Aden. The film has the feeling of a ballet as one watches the men's shadows on the ground as they meditate after a grueling training session. Even though there is no clear indication Galoup is gay, but the way he watches Sentain leaves the viewer to think otherwise. The way Galoup touches Forrestier's bracelet is another indication of what is really troubling Galoup, in spite of the fact he is seeing one of the local women.

Denis Lavant, an intense actor, plays Galoup with such control, yet it's clear to see what's eating him. Gregoire Colin, another actor with a great range, hardly utters a word throughout the film, yet, he comes across loud and clear in knowing what his superior is doing to him and being a better man for taking the abuse. Michel Subor is the troop's commander, a man into himself, but wise enough to detect all what's happening to the young people under his command.

Clair Denis created an exquisite work of art. Ms Denis is a director that always delivers. The film solidifies her as one of the best women making movies in France, and all over the world, for that matter.

Claire Denis' Beau travail, alongside Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité, is a French film I wouldn't suggest to those who get easily bored in a movie theater. But if one is willing to forget the conventions of narrative cinema and accept the sometimes documentarian, sometimes corporeally poetic way Beau travail approaches it's subject, this should be a true treat for both the eyes and the mind.

The story of the movie is thin as paper: Galoup, a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion, has to deal with his jealousy when a new recruit called Sentain becomes a hero in the eyes of his men. Alongside Galoup's soldiers, the only other important player in this bizarre drama is Forestier, Galoup's superior, who he obviously admires, but who doesn't share his resentment for Sentain. Gradually, Galoup's envy for Sentain becomes too much for him to take, and his downward spiral begins.

Denis depicts, with great sense for details, how the military routines dominate every aspect of the legionnaires' (and especially Galoup's) life. This is portrayed effectively in the beginning of the film, when the soldiers' crude attempts to dance in a disco are compared to their beautiful, elegant movements during physical training. To Galoup, military discipline has become the only form of self-expression, and for this reason he hates Sentain, who tries to bring a little more humanity to the camp. Or does he? A curious aspect of the film is that we never see any of the things Galoup, in his narrative, accuses Sentain of. Only in the end Sentain acts against Galoup's strict orders, and this could be seen as counterreaction to Galoup's obvious hatred and unreasonable forms of punishment; the humane deed Sentain commits is something any soldier who isn't thoroughly programmed would do. So, since the story is told from Galoup's point of view, it could be argued that he has become paranoid, that as soldier without a war or an enemy he is only looking for an object to his emotional output (which the military life has distorted into hatred and envy), and Sentain, because of his one act of heroism, happens to be an apt target.

The above, however, isn't the only way to interpret the story. It is quite possible that Sentain acts the way Galoup says he does, and this turns the movie into a triangle (or a rectangle) drama between Galoup, Sentain and his men, possibly even his superior. The only thing Galoup's seems to (or is able to) care about is the military, and disciplining the legionnaires is his way of showing his affection. But this balance is broken by Sentain, whom the men admire, and who's actions are approved by Forestier. Since Galoup fears he is about to lose the very substance of his life, he reacts the only way is familiar with: by tightening his rule. Galoup's behaviour is, of course, bound to have repercussions, but there is no other option he can possibly think of.

Besides the way military life takes control of the men, Denis' other obvious point is to show how absurd and pointless the army routines seem in the eyes of an outsider. During the film we see countless training numbers and war excercises and witness the soldiers dull everyday life, but never do we see them doing anything useful. At one time the legionnaires build a camp in the desert, but the only reason for this seems to be Galoup's desire to get some action to the bored men. Beau travail's antimilitaristic theme becomes even more obvious, when the legionnaires' life is shown in contrast of the Africans who neighbour them. These people shepherd their herd, weave mats, sell things, make food, and watch with astonishment as the soldiers dig a hole in the middle of nowhere. The personal drama in the film becomes even more tragic, when Denis shows just how meaningless is the system that produces these kind of human beings. In the terrific final scene of the film we see the whole scale of Galoup's desperation as it becomes obvious, that he could never be anything else than a sad, retired army officer with no chance of fitting into the civilian world.

Every so often a movie comes out that conflicts me, and these are the movies that take me quite a while to analyze. Sometimes it will take a second view to see if I missed some vital element, or it will dawn on me later, and thus I will have grasped what it was that at the moment seemed rather inconsequential. BEAU TRAVAIL, Claire Denis' 1999 film, is one of these movies. It is an adaptation of Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" -- although adaptation should be expressed in a loose term. It tells the story of an army troop stationed at Djibouti, training endlessly under the firm hand of a nearly expressionless Denis Lavant, himself a training machine, and the arrival of a young soldier played by the very beautiful Gregoire Colin who becomes the catalyst that triggers a response from Lavant. Colin, as Sentain, is the young rookie everyone loves and admires; he has great beauty and is the epitome of masculinity. This ticks Lavant's Galoup to approach Sentain at an oblique angle, and a scene in which both men face off resembles that of two lions about to attack and is a sequence of immense beauty because you see the hardened expression on Lavant's leonine face pitted against Colin's frightened yet set facade. This is what cinema is supposed to do: tell a story without too much dialogue, maybe a voice-over here or there as BEAU TRAVAIL does, and then get to its denouement, which in this movie is made more ironic than tragic. Where it falters a little is in its portentous score with a male chorus which is lifted from the opera version: it's too intrusive and is reminiscent of the score used for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but there it had a purpose; here, I didn't see it. Frequent incursions into dance music also distract a little from the meat of the story. What I do admire is Denis' approach to the material. In bringing a strong homoerotic element to the scene, she also manages to do what few gay directors have done: create a visually mesmerizing work of art where male passion is expressed through what is appropriate of the gender: physical activity. It's what I've always wanted to see: an aggressive ballet of masculine energy which unfolds a deceptively simple story of attraction, repulsion, and envy. Highly recommended.

"Gold in the mountain, and gold in the glen, and greed in the heart, heaven having no part, and unsatisfied men." - Melville

Claire Denis directs "Beau Travail". The film's loosely based on several Herman Melville poems ("The Night March" and "Gold in the Mountain"), as well as Melville's "Billy Budd", a maritime tale which questioned man's thoughtless submission to various forms of authority (military, media, biblical, political etc). Denis' film swaps the novella's maritime setting for the sandy deserts of Djibouti, a country in Eastern Africa. Her protagonists are soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. They're stationed in Djibouti to do the neo-Imperialist biddings of France and (unofficially) the US, who to this day maintain violent, dictatorial puppet regimes in the country. The site of the only "official" US military bases on the African continent, the country is also used as a staging ground in an overall strategy to dominate the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Peninsula. From Djibouti, various plots were, and continue to be, mounted to destabilise Ethiopia and Somalia.

"Different viewpoints count," Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant) narrates at the start of the film. He's speaking in hindsight. The film then jumps from Galoup's apartment in France to the deserts of Djibouti, several months prior. Here Galoup feuds with Gilles, a fellow soldier whose physical beauty, social standing and strength inexplicably make him jealous. Later Galoup orders Gilles to trek across the African desert without water and with a tampered compass. The man almost dies, leading to Galup's swift court-martial. Significantly, Gilles is rescued by a group of Djiboutis. Other scenes focus on the persecution of black officers within the Foreign Legion. The film ends with close-ups of Galoup's veins, quietly pumping blood, before a beautiful sequence in which he dances to Corona's "The Rhythm of the Night".

More than Melville, key influences on the picture are Jean-Luc Godard's "Le Petit Soldat" and Resnais' "Muriel". Both dealt with the Algerian war, a then-taboo subject which led to both films being attacked and banned. Denis' film maintains the structure and voice-over narration of Godard's film, linkages which are made explicit by the military superior in her film being named after the hero of Godard's. They're also played by the same actor (Michel Subor). Interestingly, the voice over narration in both films are designed to echo each other. "I have a lot of time ahead of me," the narrators of Denis' film begins, precisely the line which ends Godard's picture. The message is clear. History rolls on, and France's imperialist doings didn't end with Algeria.

Denis spent much of her childhood in Djibouti. She wrote "Beau Travail's" script herself and teamed up with female cinematographer Agnes Godard for the shoot. The duo create a film which plays like a series of dreams within dreams, mirages within mirages, memory fragments constantly dancing and fusing and fluttering off into the wind. The film unfolds like dance, ethereal, hazy and liquid. Most of its running time consists of shots of soldiers training, working, exercising and waiting. These sequences are simultaneously banal and highly choreographed, the men's bodies bending to some unspoken dance routine.

Throughout the film Denis captures the dangers of machismo, male egos and a kind of simmering hunger for violence. But her imagery is both homo-erotic and neutering; these warriors are feminized, painted as infants, small boys, sensitive, confused, pitifully childish and overly emotional. Denis softens everything, turns masculinity into something weak and soft and round, which indeed was always the unspoken core of even "traditional masculinity". Still, these soldiers are dangerous. And they are dangerous precisely because of their weaknesses. Most of the film functions as a dreamy allegory for the white man's desire to violently assert himself over the Other, be they African or fellowman; to deny the Other's culture, voice, customs, practises or right-of-governance. Galoup in particular is obsessed with control, organisation and the meticulous. Some have said the film is about Galoup's "homosexuality", but this misses the point. Whilst all sexuality is on some level violent, the film itself is almost completely asexual. The soldiers have been conditioned to repress love, not sex, and it is this conditioning which flies in the face of the men's homo-social love, which in turn results in violent blow-back.

The film's title means "beautiful work", referring ironically to the Empire's work in Africa, and of course its long-standing rationalisations for bloodshed. The film's title is also a command, a call to do "good work" rather than the devil's deeds. Much of the film is sprinkled with shots of African women, who exist outside the soldiers' story. Like a Greek chorus, they're positioned to both witnesses white cruelty, silently judging from afar, and to mock the petty men skirmishing below them. The gyrations of these African women to pop songs is later mirrored to Galoup's own dance sequence (no rehearsals, shot in one take), in which his ego softens, he symbolically turns his back to a reflection of himself and he finally cuts loose. This is the only moment in the film in which Galoup shifts from a watcher and subject - and by extension a master - to an object. He relinquishes control and allows us to possess a piece of him.

Denis' work frequently deals with the Empire's relationship with Africa ("White Material", "No Fear, No Die", "Chocolat", "35 Shots of Rum" etc). Of these, "Beau Travail" is perhaps her most unconventional film. See too "35 Shots of Rum", arguably a better film, which uses Jean Renoir as a springboard as Denis uses Godard here.

8.5/10 – Worth two viewings.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is a book that has given me many titles I would never heard of or seen before reading it, and this French film is another of those films inside that I was looking forward to trying. Basically ex-Foreign Legion master sergeant officer Galoup (Denis Lavant) is reminiscing about his time leading his men, under the direction of Commander Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), in the desert, mostly supervising the psychical exercise and other routine duties. The troop is one day joined by good looking, socially skilled and bold Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin), who Galoup becomes malicious of, there are suggestions of possible homosexual feelings awakened as well. There is a point when Sentain disobeys his orders to save another soldier, and there is a chance to destroy him for the master sergeant, so he punishes him sticking him in the middle of the desert and forced to walk back to base. Galoup makes this impossible for him with the lack of drinking water and a broken compass, so Sentain looks doomed to suffer exhaustion and dehydration, but he is found and rescued on the salt flats by a group of Djiboutis. In the end Galoup is given a court martial, his time ended in the Foreign Legion and sent back to France, and he is supposedly going to commit suicide, but the ending seems to be an all over the place interpretive dance. The acting is as good as you can get, especially good is Lavant, I may not have understood the full story, but I was engaged by many moments of the film. Most memorable moments were the fantastic disco scenes with great soundtrack, like the French dub of "Kiss Kiss" by Holly Valance (or "Simarik"), and the final dance to "The Rhythm of the Night" by Corona, and the exercise training and desert walk scenes stand out, overall it is an intriguing psychological drama. Very good!