• Beau Travail

12/08/22 (Thurs)

In Claire Denis’ disjointed 1999 film, Galoup, a sergeant in the Foreign Legion in Djibouti who basks in the imagined approval of his commander, is upset when an unwitting rival enters the picture after heroically saving victims in a helicopter crash. The kid is young, muscular and effortlessly good looking, and seems to stand above and apart from the usual misfits that make up the Foreign Legion (such as a less attractive Russian who seeks to join). When the commander learns that the boy was abandoned as a baby and found in a stairwell, he shrugs and mutters approvingly, “It was a good find,” upsetting Galoup even more. Galoup’s obsessive jealousy at thinking himself displaced in his commander’s affections leads him to take action against the kid: seizing the chance when he catches him giving water to a fellow soldier who is being punished, he takes the boy out into the desert, gives him a broken compass, and dumps him in the middle of nowhere. The consequences prove severe for everyone.

The film, based loosely on Billy Budd, has an unmistakably homoerotic feel with plenty of shirtless men and suggestive camerawork from start to finish, though Galoup’s motivations are left ambiguous: he could just as well be upset at the thought of being usurped power-wise as taken by the kid’s otherworldly beauty (or, for that matter, the commander’s masculinity). Still, the inclusion of music from Britten’s opera Billy Budd suggests that the director knew very well what she was doing. The idea of a all-too-beautiful interloper disrupting the military order is reminiscent of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and Nagisa Oshima’s Gohatto, but those are more straightforward and compelling in story terms.

The story here is told in flashback as Galoup, long exiled from his beloved Foreign Legion, writes his memories of the times from his home in Marseilles. He recalls, “I screwed up from a certain viewpoint” – yeah, you could say that. What little dialogue there was seems overly literary, at least based on the subtitles. The flashback technique can be sloppy as there are some scenes that Galoup could not have witnessed, such as the key “good find” scene above, and it’s not quite clear whether he’s remembering accurately or reinventing, though I suppose the writer/director could claim that that’s the point. I thought it was just confusing. In the end, he is shown lying down with a gun in hand, suggesting that he is planning to end his own story there. Then the film shifts suddenly to a scene of him against a black background dancing furiously to a disco number, after which the film abruptly ends. Letting his gay self out at last? A picture of obsession gone wild? I have no idea.

In any event, the narrative was a distant second to the stunning visuals by Agnès Godard. The many scenes showing the Legionnaires at work – training, ironing, hanging out – appear choreographed rather than real, more like highly coordinated dance than actual training. One scene has the men, shirtless as usual, lunging at each other repeatedly and bear hugging. I can only wonder what that is all about, but it was certainly beautifully captured. Long shots are dominant throughout, giving it the feel of a Busby Berkeley production. We never get to know any of the men other than as a group. There are also great shots of the haunting scenery of Djibouti as well as the Africans themselves, whose easy-going lifestyles provide a noted contrast with the discipline of the Frenchmen. The most startling of those shots is in the disco, where the African women are staring practically directly at the camera a la “Big Spender” as the men weave through seeking to pick them up. Though women overall play a minor role in the film, Marta Tafesse Kassa, who plays Galoup’s girlfriend, is the film’s single most memorable character, if only for her intense look. Denis Lavant was a close second as Galoup.

I wanted to like this more, but it felt like a series of brush strokes that never came together as a painting. It’s a film more for critics than for audiences.