Claire Denis - Beau travail (1999)

In this military drama, a military man finds his position of prominence questioned when a new recruit wins the commander's favor. Galoup (Denis Lavant) is an officer at a French Foreign Legion outpost in the Gulf of Dijbouti, where he enjoys a close relationship with the Commanding Officer (Michel Subor) and works with a team of fit young men who work hard all day and play hard all night. When Sentain (Gregoire Colin), a new recruit, joins the troops, Galoup believes that it upsets the delicate balance between the C.O. and the other men. Sentain is well-liked by his comrades for his good humor and selfless nature, and his virtues make him the C.O.'s new favorite. Galoup is jealous of the attention Sentain receives, and he devises a plan to discredit Sentain in the eyes of the other men and have him drummed out of the service. Galoup's plot is found out, however, and Galoup is stripped of his rank and sent home. Beau Travail was loosely based on Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville, though disco dancing did not figure quite as prominently in Melville's novella.





Although the films of Claire Denis have always displayed a cool, vaguely hallucinatory appreciation of the surfaces of the world, none of this gifted French filmmaker's previous work has prepared us for the voluptuous austerity of ''Beau Travail.'' Loosely adapted from ''Billy Budd'' and set in a French Foreign Legion outpost in the East African enclave of Djibouti, the film is narrated by Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant), the movie's equivalent of Claggart, the sinister master-of-arms who destroys an innocent sailor in Melville's allegorical novella.

''Beau Travail'' hews to the basic outlines of Melville's fable, which was set in the British Navy in 1797, but the story is really just a pretext for what emerges as a woman's rapt meditation on an all-male society, its pecking order and its punishing rituals of authority, repression, discipline and honor. And because it is set in an impoverished East African country (Ms. Denis spent her childhood in French West Africa), the film has a political dimension. You sense the repressed racial tensions among the legionnaires, who are both white European and black African, and their uneasy relationship with the townspeople near the outpost.

What Ms. Denis has made of ''Billy Budd'' is the visually spellbinding cinematic equivalent of a military ballet in which the legionnaires' rigorous drills and training rituals are depicted as ecstatic rites of purification, the embodiment of an impenetrable masculine mystique before which the director stands in awe. Where another filmmaker exploring the same material might emphasize its homoerotic subtext, Ms. Denis is in search of something deeper, more elemental and ultimately more elusive.

Observing the young men's beautiful bodies in motion, the movie often presents them as the bodies of sleek trained animals relentlessly conditioned into mechanized fighting machines. Some of the most haunting images show the men wriggling and scurrying like agitated rodents through the dirt under barbed wire. But other sequences have an astounding poignancy. In one training ritual, the bare-chested legionnaires ritually and without a trace of self-consciousness or squeamishness throw themselves into each other's arms. A stunning sequence views them from a distance through a chain fence as they frolic in the waters in the Gulf of Aden. The landscape, which juxtaposes extreme beauty and desolation, surreally mirrors this life of rugged austerity. The parched, stony wasteland in which they train abuts a gorgeous turquoise sea from whose waters jut three volcanic islands.

''Beau Travail'' de-emphasizes Melville's allegory to the point that the story is almost incidental. Its Billy Budd figure, Gilles Sentain (Gregoire Colin), offends the sergeant by saving the life of a fellow soldier who is seriously injured when a helicopter mysteriously crashes into the sea. Refusing to believe in Sentain's selflessness, Galoup decides Sentain is really up to no good and begins persecuting him. Mr. Colin's role is a marked departure for this talented actor, who recently played a lean and hungry predator in ''The Dreamlife of Angels.'' But instead of the radiant embodiment of goodness, Sentain is a model of blank military discipline and obedience whose humane instincts are what get him into trouble.

In the embattled relationship that develops between them, we never have a sense of pure good and pure evil locked in a metaphysical struggle. Nor does the film build up a terrifying sense of implacable cruelty goaded into viciousness by an image of heroic innocence and victimization. Galoup ultimately emerges as a sympathetic figure whose urge to destroy Sentain is portrayed as an inevitable, almost Pavlovian response to the punishing asceticism of military life. Ms. Denis, having been entranced by the life she is been observing, ultimately wants to disavow its mystique.

''Beau Travail'' ends with a thrilling and unexpected leap in a scene of frenzied Dionysian release. It is the perfect final gesture in a film that has the sweep and esthetic power of a full-length ballet. (Stephen Holden, NYT)







Bella tarea
Un sargento de la Legión Extranjera en Djibouti, África, siente atracción, luego celos y, finalmente, odio por uno de sus soldados más sobresalientes. El enfrentamiento entre los dos hombres se convierte en la única guerra concreta para ellos, sumergidos en el tedio del entrenamiento y los rituales cotidianos de los militares en interregnos de paz.

Film de la francesa Claire Denis libremente inspirado en Billy Budd, de Herman Melville, se exhibió en varios festivales, donde causó polémica por su visión brutal y destructiva de la sexualidad masculina e impresionó por su estilizado concepto visual para retratar la agonía del hombre en el desierto. (pantalla info)



Un peloton de la Légion Etrangère oublié, abandonné quelque part dans le Golfe de Djibouti. Les restes d’une armée fantôme qui joue à la guerre et répare les routes. A Marseille l’ex-adjudant Galoup se souvient de ces temps heureux, de cette vie si bien orchestrée, de ses hommes, son cher troupeau. Mais ce qu’il a vraiment perdu, c’est son commandant. Son commandant qu’il n’a pas voulu partager avec un jeune légionnaire. (unifrance.org)





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