(1999)
4
Jonathan Crow
Loosely based on Herman Melville's Billy Budd and clearly influenced by the works of Alain Resnais, Claire Denis's film is a complex, beautifully photographed look into foreignness of all stripes. Within the film's elegant opening montage, Denis sets up the French Legion's estrangement to Djibouti's harsh landscape, and the French empire's estrangement from its distant, glorious past. Denis details obsessively not only the rituals of military life but the half-naked bodies of the legionnaires in a manner that both recalls and obliquely mocks Leni Riefenstahl. The constant motif of the male form also sets up the homoerotic tension between Galoup (Denis Lavant), Commanding Office Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), and underling Sentain (Gregoire Colin). Lavant's performance during Galoup's dancing scene at the end of the film is a revelation, in turns stiff and free, awkward and graceful, and crazed and liberated. Making use of flashbacks and flash-forwards, Denis spins a poetic, passionate, and compelling tale of envy and alienation.
Beau Travail on AllMovie
Beau Travail (1999)
