Beau Travail
(1998)
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In loosely adapting Herman Melville's BILLY BUDD, Claire Denis has constructed a dreamy, detached visual poem that is at once somber and gorgeous. Denis transfers the tale's original location from the sea to the sparse landscape of East Africa's Djibouti. The film is narrated by Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant), a French Foreign Legion officer who is intimidated by the arrival of Sentain (Gregoire Colin). Galoup becomes jealous when his commander, Forestier (Michel Subor), begins showing the new recruit extreme favoritism, and after Sentain bravely aids in the rescue of a downed aircraft, Forestier bestows upon him a glowing commendation. Galoup, overcome with jealousy, recklessly acts out on his irrational emotion, with near tragic results. |
Translating Herman Melville's Billy Budd from the 18th-century Royal Navy to the modern Foreign Legion, Claire Denis has produced a simmering study of petty tyranny, fatuous duty and homoerotic repression. Spurning the barked histrionics of American boot camp pictures, Denis uses stylised audiovisual rhythms to convey the ennui endured by an isolated unit in Djibouti. As the sergeant seized by a pathological hatred of new recruit Grégoire Colin, Denis Lavant gives a remarkable, almost wordless performance that culminates in some astonishing disco gyrations. Shot through with motifs from Benjamin Britten's opera based on the same story, this is about as disconcerting as screen poetry can get.
Halliwell's Film Guide
This is Billy Budd with sand: a glumly repressed drama that is closer to ballet than narrative cinema, with much slow homoerotic posturing but little tension; it found an appreciative audience at film festivals.