Beau Travail

Abstract film, told by contrasts, stylized swathes of life, Claires Denis stumbles upon little that is new here, but something here intrigues me a lot, most of it in the first half.

The rites, rituals and ceremonial pomp by which army units in the line of fire choose to mythologize and invoke a story of heroic braggadoccio, which Claires Denis approaches with a curious air of the solemn and the mocking, I only briefly experienced in my short time with an infantry regime. I served most of my army time in the Technician Corps, the inglorious greasemonkeys, repairing tanks or slacking. But the tedium of army life is our shared legacy with the Foreign Legion or the Special Ops.

Denis subverts this, in mocking feminism reducing that tedium to the meticulous ironing and creasing of uniforms and laundry. The savage beast is thus shown to be domesticated, fussing over a crease. It's been a man's cinema this first century, so perhaps we should get accustomed to the scorn and irony of female directors getting back at us. Nevertheless she makes a cutting remark, that fastidiousness (a matter of order and appearances) is accomplished with these creases.

Inside the discotheque, where the strobe lights and Arab pop beats are equally kitsch and otherworldly, the woman is mysterious and alluring, exudes promises of sexual danger. In this game of seduction, the Legionnaires are rapacious, overly eager boys, crossing and recrossing before the seductive female gaze and smile. This first part for me is two images. The flickering shot of an Arab girl's face, gleaming with strobing colorful lights, and the shot of Legionnaires etched in silhouette in an empty street by night.

Here lies the brilliance of Denis though. We know the emerging story of a cruel superior taking an unfathomable dislike to the innocent footsoldier from Billy Bud, Herman Melville's short story, and how that innocence of face invites a hatred that seethes deeper, but Denis reworks this entirely in terms of cinema. Looking at the sergeant's face we can read the portents of evil to come, but she further paints it with pictures.

Ideals don't matter here, so Denis aptly carries her tragedy out to a sunbaked rocky desert. Perhaps she understood what she was doing as an opera, but in those scenes where we see men flexing their muscles or performing curious rituals out in the open air, the bombast of music and image verges on camp. I don't know much about camp though, so this doesn't concern me overmuch. She also gives us a tracking shot and a wistful tune in the soundtrack, which I find both to be beneath the filmmaking she exhibits in the rest of the film.

Elsewhere she gives us images of colonial guilt, a popular subject of the European intellectual, where for example a process of Legionnaires carry a black man, then they switch and he carries a white man on his shoulders. The Djibouti natives of that desert mostly observe this ritual of male aggression with indifference though, curiosity or compassion.

A lot of what the film does is only fair, and although thematically it leaves me unfulfilled, the apogee for me is the lasting impression. Of which Beau Travail leaves a strong one.

Djibouti sets the scene for this engagement, a foreign legion overseas, on an assignment, lost souls follow traditions, rocky roads fulfil their missions, as the sun beats down and ferments discontent. Galoup has taken aim at Gilles Sentain, the reasons personal, full of disdain, it leads to tension and dissension, abhorrence propagates expulsion, a futile battle, a ridiculous campaign.

In all walks of life people don't get on, or someone despises another for reasons only fathomable to them, but it's only in certain professions, with the mind-sets they promote, that the outcomes can be so devastating and despicable. Often a tough watch, you may ask yourself what lengths you might go to if the opportunity presented in a similar scenario.

The film's message about the goodness and innocence of Setain, and the malice of Sargeant Galoup, is too subtle for the film's own good, and comes across as being undeveloped.

Why doesn't Galoup more deeply question his hatred for Setain? I was a bit dismayed that this wasn't questioned much, even if there weren't any answers. Also, the film's marketing makes the film sound lurid and sexual, whereas it is not. Perhaps to draw in more viewers for an otherwise dry and sparse depiction of man's senselessness.

The film initially shows a lot of promise. The interaction among the men is more comradeship than anything else. I was interested in the depiction of Legionnaire military life, especially from the various other countries.

Going against the trend of reviews here, as is usual for me, I loved this film. Perhaps only another outsider can see how brilliantly Lavant acts the outsider. He is a jealous outsider, jealous of Sentain. He is jealous of him, not in love with him and there is a difference. Galoup (Lavant) truly loves Forestier, but as Galoup points out, Forestier doesn't care. Instead, when Sentain appears, Forestier is attracted to him in a way he was not to Galoup. Well, Sentain is charming, calm, open, attractive, all the things Galoup is not. Sentain is one of the gang, Galoup is an outsider and no matter how hard he tries, he cannot get in. Much of the film is dialogue free, but Lavant admirably shows what he is feeling with his facial and body gestures. And after all that falls out from this jealous rage, Galoup is returned to France but still remains an outsider. No friends in the Legion, nor out of it. And the finale, Galoup dancing by himself in a very contorted way, is one of the most agonizing I have seen. It represents well what Galoup's life is like. You should not see this film if you are looking for a homoerotic experience. It is not about sexuality, but the rage of an outsider. As such, it is brilliant.

"Beau Travail" uniquely provides a woman's eye, director/co-writer Claire Denis, on the movie genre of taut men in groups, peace time military subset, with much less profanity or crudeness or misogyny than is typical.

The camera loves looking at all these half naked, trim, fit young men, as they are seen over and over in all kinds of repetitive physical exertions, from the usual military obstacle courses to martial arts exercises that look like tai chi, to ones that seem like yoga and then banging against each other. (Surely these images must have influenced the later directors of "Tigerland" and "Jarhead.") It is amusing to see them busily ironing clothes in order to get the required creases in their uniforms. I haven't seen such a sensual scene of men ironing since Kevin Costner in "Bull Durham."

The narrating sergeant "Galoup" is the usual strict bully, punishingly competitive in all these exercises. But I completely missed that the film was an adaptation of "Billy Budd" until I saw the closing credits that referenced the Britten opera on the soundtrack because the object of his attention, "Sentain," doesn't seem like a helpless victim.

Unlike all movies about the duress of basic training and keeping enlisted men in line, the story is not from the point of view of this victim, but is told as a flashback by the sergeant with lots of references to what is lost and found (we hear "perdu" and "trouve" a lot though some is lost in translation as idioms are poorly translated in the subtitles, such as of sang froid).

The sergeant seems out of "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" school, setting the under-employed Foreign Legionnaires posted on the coast of Djibouti to work repairing deserted roads and literally digging holes in the desert to work out his frustrations.

The orphan just gets under his burr until he intentionally provokes him to the limit. It is certainly not clear what it is about him that annoys the sergeant. His lean beauty? His casual heroism? Even if there's some conflicted homosexual urges, and the sensuality of the local African environment and music are continually emphasized, amidst the homo-erotic subtext, the sergeant clearly has the hots for a young local woman.

We don't get to learn much about the individual Legionnaires. The commandant, the crusty Michel Subor, is comfortable as a career soldier and, surprisingly in this genre, does support a sense of fair play and justice, as symbolized by his chess playing. He keeps insisting the men are no longer Russian or African but now are loyal to the Legion (as we keep hearing the anthem over and over). There is some grudging tolerance of the exoticism of diversity, even as the Muslims are teased during Ramadan.

Even as viewed on video tape, the setting and contrasts in Africa are beautiful – from the desert to the sparkling bright ocean, but the narration is annoying, even as it ties together the memories of regret.

The music is very evocative of the setting. The curving sensuality of night time African dance clubs and the women dancing is contrasted with the formality of the men's exercising. So I think in the conclusion the sergeant is finally trying to integrate all his experiences to the tune of "Spirit of the Night."