Beau Travail (1999)

Great Film

This is a great film from a cinematographic view point. It is very well filmed, the script is well-done, director does an awesome job to relate the attitude of service in hot countries. The background scenery is very well picked. Nothing is done in an excessive way in this film !!! It's definitely worth owning!!! April 17, 2008

A Cinematic Masterpiece

Melville's great Billy Budd story told from the perspective of Claggart, who is the villain in Melville's story, but he's not exactly so evil here, even though he does try to kill someone. A very simple and powerful story of irrational hatred and rivalry between two men in the French Foreign legion. The theme is eternal. And the storytelling is almost all done through images and music, very little dialogue. Not really sure why the reviews are so mixed. It's a truly compelling movie for anyone who appreciates great cinema. Unlike Melville's story, this one has a more sanguine ending, with both protagonists surviving. The movie ends with a truly amazing solo dance by the main protagonist. Anyone interested in modern dance should check it out. July 11, 2007

Talk about a woman who loves to focus on the male body.

Even though I've seen quite a few French films this seems to be one of better ones. Is this movie slow pace?, yes but it's done for a reason. While viewing this you can tell that director Claire Denis had a tight budget and limited technical resources when this film was shot, but her fecund imagination and masterful directorial skills don't let those constraints appear on the screen. Visually, Beau Travail is rich in telling imagery, stunning settings, and powerful contrasts. Narrated in voiceover by the central character, Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant), Beau Travail uses minimal dialogue in telling a story that is simply plotted, but complicated in overtones and undertones, much of which is provided by subtle suggestion and richly ambiguous imagery. Running throughout like a leitmotif are shots of the squad of legionnaires in rigorous exercise and military training exercises, as well as attending to the daily rituals of laundry, bathing, and shaving.

The exercise sequences are highly choreographed. Whether engaged in yoga-like movements, or crawling under barbed wire, or traversing rope like high wire artists against the tropical blue sky, Denis mines the images of these lean, hard, half-naked men to make her points. Accompanying much of this footage with music from Britten's Billy Budd adds intensity and a further ritualistic strangeness to the mix.Into the status quo enters a newcomer, Sentain (Gregoire Colin), who proves to be popular with the other men and with the commander, Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor). Galoup's jealousy is aroused, and with the inevitability of Greek myth, the events unfold. The script throws in a passing line to the effect that Subor has been dogged by rumors, but the rumors are unspecified. His admiration for Sentain is expressed indirectly, verbally, but nothing happens between them. Still, through it all, the subtext of homoerotic love is palpably present, a given of the situation which remains unarticulated.

There are sequences, as well, of the men in town, largely nighttime scenes in a local discotheque, where the men mix with local black women. The music and dancing are charged, but the sexuality is largely implied. A brief scene nicely establishes Galoup's tender relationship with his woman. The relationship of blacks to whites and the place of blacks in the colonial setting is otherwise left unexplored, aside from a variety of images of the natives quietly going through their day-to-day lives in the austere environment. The latter strongly contrasts with the legionnaires' style of defying the same environment, with their grueling exercise under the hot sun, their fitted and primly creased uniforms challenging the heat and humidity.

In telling her story, Denis, through incidents and imagery, offers more to think about in her disciplined ninety minutes than other directors manage in twice the time. The former Russian soldier who has joined the Legion complains of having fought for an ideal that kept changing, while Subor, the ultimate professional soldier, claims no ideals at all. He, though, is addicted to kat, the narcotic leaf that the natives chew. The idea of the Legion as family, variations on themes of competitiveness (combat, games of chess and billiards) and the ever present questions of life, death, and mortality are offered in a rich mix, an object lesson in thoughtful filmmaking. Highly recommended.


May 10, 2007

NICE BODYS,BUT NOT A GREAT PLOT

This movie is quite slow, for those who are expecting a gay film, this is not, it may under certain circunstances, but is more about tehe foreign legion in Africa. I saw it once, that was enough, I wouldn not recomended it July 1, 2006

A very personal experience

This movie is maddeningly slow. You really have to really be a certain kind of person to appreciate where Claire Denis is going here, and you have to willing to come along for the ride--the entire ride. I got it, and I loved it--but I also recognize that I'm probably in the minority.

Editorial reviews on the pretentious-side (e.g. the New Yorker) didn't have enough good things to say about Beau Travail. More down-to-earth reviews had a "What the heck???" feel to them.

For me, it was fortunate that I watched Beau Trvail in the theater--I was forced to yield a slice of my life over to the film. Being in an open and pensive mood also helped. Even then, it wasn't so much the movie itself but how it made me feel afterwards. It grew on me like a fungus, the neurons trying to process all of the subtext behind what (at the time) just seemed like 90 minutes of desert. After a few weeks, I found myself aching to connect again with the film, digesting every review I could find. The subway scenes peppered throughout the movie are telling, as are the forlorn Legionnaires singing of their lost-love. When the resolution comes, it is abrupt and powerful.

But this was a very personal experience, and my connection with the film probably says more about me as a person than anything about Beau Travail itself. Denis' "Friday Night" follows nearly the same pattern, but I found that film just as maddeningly slow but without the payoff. October 31, 2005

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