We have an isolated detachment of legionnaires, a disciplined group of recruits who train to function with the precision of a single machine; and we have a dark and lonely officer, who feels displaced between the body of legionaries he commands and the commander he obeys.
As a representation of the life of the legionnaires it is little short of laughable, and everything seems an excuse for Claire Denis to focus on the rhythm of male bodies performing pseudo-military routines with the same aftertaste with which Riefensthal filmed pole vaulters, obsessed with the repetition, perfection and variation of the same exercises, as well as in strange choreographies that are treated as if they were rituals and dances of the Nuba.
Everything is reduced to the typical fashionable look at machismo and the traditional roles associated with masculinity, with the critical tone of a feminist and the drooling fascination of a pretty hot teenager at the same time. In the end, the legionary discipline seems to serve to show how the soldiers rub against each other, or do the laundry clad in tight shorts, and we have a whole homoerotic hymn to camaraderie and male rivalry. We already know that for some feminists, behind any hypermasculine and macho institution there is some latent homosexuality. As such, it would be the reverse of so many stories about women filmed by men and that also had a certain homosexual undertone (Ford's 7 women, for example).
The story, very thin and for which Denis shows a secondary interest, is nothing more than an underdeveloped plot of jealousy, hatred and exclusion, an imaginary love triangle, with the main character Galoup (Denis Lavant, absolutely brilliant), fascinated by his superior and at the same time by Sentain, a handsome and newly arrived legionnaire (the deadpan Grégoire Colin). Threatened by what he doesn't quite know, he will indulge in a destructive fixation to finish off Sentain. Anyway, it's the story of Melville's Billy Budd, and indeed, fragments of Britten's opera are scattered throughout the soundtrack.
The footage consists mainly in idle time, with the legionnaires engaged in domestic chores or military routines, always obsessively focused on the muscular bodies of the youngsters, reified as if they were a group of Pasolini's Argonauts, with the excuse of camaraderie. Treated as an institution and not as human beings, there is not the slightest individualization.
The women only appear tangentially, also objectified and as a mere sexual object, while they offer themselves dancing in a disco. If the male ensemble seems to have its vocation as a group in perfecting this military machine of power and dominance, or rather in optimizing the bodily capacities of each piece of that machine, in women the function is reduced to an always available chorus of prostitutes, solace for the warriors when these have some spare time.
If it pretends to be a microcosm of what society is, the vision is of absolute simplicity, myopia, extremism and reductionism, but it is what we can expect nowadays.
The film benefits from beautiful locations, impressive cinematography and the presence of the always extraordinary Denis Lavant (who performs a most striking gymnastic dance at the end of the film); but we cannot help but feel that the footage is excessive, that in the end it tells us very little, and that most of the film goes into showing the bodies of the young legionnaires.
One of those films that a certain sector of critics inevitably like, due to the good work of the director, the careful visual aspect and certain ambiguous connotations. All style without substance. Its ideas are in the current wave, but they are overwhelmingly simplistic. This is of course it's moment.
As a representation of the life of the legionnaires it is little short of laughable, and everything seems an excuse for Claire Denis to focus on the rhythm of male bodies performing pseudo-military routines with the same aftertaste with which Riefensthal filmed pole vaulters, obsessed with the repetition, perfection and variation of the same exercises, as well as in strange choreographies that are treated as if they were rituals and dances of the Nuba.
Everything is reduced to the typical fashionable look at machismo and the traditional roles associated with masculinity, with the critical tone of a feminist and the drooling fascination of a pretty hot teenager at the same time. In the end, the legionary discipline seems to serve to show how the soldiers rub against each other, or do the laundry clad in tight shorts, and we have a whole homoerotic hymn to camaraderie and male rivalry. We already know that for some feminists, behind any hypermasculine and macho institution there is some latent homosexuality. As such, it would be the reverse of so many stories about women filmed by men and that also had a certain homosexual undertone (Ford's 7 women, for example).
The story, very thin and for which Denis shows a secondary interest, is nothing more than an underdeveloped plot of jealousy, hatred and exclusion, an imaginary love triangle, with the main character Galoup (Denis Lavant, absolutely brilliant), fascinated by his superior and at the same time by Sentain, a handsome and newly arrived legionnaire (the deadpan Grégoire Colin). Threatened by what he doesn't quite know, he will indulge in a destructive fixation to finish off Sentain. Anyway, it's the story of Melville's Billy Budd, and indeed, fragments of Britten's opera are scattered throughout the soundtrack.
The footage consists mainly in idle time, with the legionnaires engaged in domestic chores or military routines, always obsessively focused on the muscular bodies of the youngsters, reified as if they were a group of Pasolini's Argonauts, with the excuse of camaraderie. Treated as an institution and not as human beings, there is not the slightest individualization.
The women only appear tangentially, also objectified and as a mere sexual object, while they offer themselves dancing in a disco. If the male ensemble seems to have its vocation as a group in perfecting this military machine of power and dominance, or rather in optimizing the bodily capacities of each piece of that machine, in women the function is reduced to an always available chorus of prostitutes, solace for the warriors when these have some spare time.
If it pretends to be a microcosm of what society is, the vision is of absolute simplicity, myopia, extremism and reductionism, but it is what we can expect nowadays.
The film benefits from beautiful locations, impressive cinematography and the presence of the always extraordinary Denis Lavant (who performs a most striking gymnastic dance at the end of the film); but we cannot help but feel that the footage is excessive, that in the end it tells us very little, and that most of the film goes into showing the bodies of the young legionnaires.
One of those films that a certain sector of critics inevitably like, due to the good work of the director, the careful visual aspect and certain ambiguous connotations. All style without substance. Its ideas are in the current wave, but they are overwhelmingly simplistic. This is of course it's moment.