# Beau travail (1999)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    BEAU TRAVAIL

Reviewed by Harvey Karten Pathe Television/La Sept ARTE Director: Claire Denis Writer: Claire Denis, Jean Pol Fargeau, inspired by Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" Cast: Gregoire Colin, Denis Lavant, Michel Subor

If you want to strip human beings to their essence, situate your movie in the desert, an area with virtually no civilian conveniences, and assemble your cast of characters in a closed space from which they cannot escape. You'll get your emotions raw: you'll find out what people are made of. The friendly feelings will surface, especially during card games, at the lone dance hall, and especially in the quiet moments when you're sharing a restful activity with your compatriots such as ironing your clothes. But the demons are bound to come out, the imps of envy and hatred the most likely candidates for surfacing.

This probably accounts for Claire Denis's situating her tense, incredibly spare 90 minute piece in a remote outpost of the French Foreign Legion in the little nation of Djibouti on Africa's Red Sea. The local inhabitants of the area, largely Muslim women who show up weekly at the dance floor to exhibit their supple bodies with gyrating rhythms at the social hall accompanied by the French men who rotate and revolve respectably in close proximity.

"Beau Travail" has little dialogue and is largely narrated from the point of view of the leader of the small group of legionnaires, Sgt. Galoup (Denis Lavant). Galoup has the men's affection and loyalty and commands discipline from this vigorous group who are under the overall command of a philosophic older man, Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor). Director Denis puts the fellows through their weekly paces, seeing the routine lives of these men guarding their remote outpost with such macho intensity that you're surprised to discover that the helmer is a woman. In one of the most physical of films, these actors--not stunt men, mind you, but performers--actually run under a series of barbed wire fences, climb over hurdles, jump into pits and climb out in the blink of an eye, do pushups in all varieties including medium-downs and bouncing on their palms, and practice disarming attackers with knives. There's even a strange exercise that has the men hugging one another and separating, hugging and separating, and performing amphibian workouts with guns in tow. When their bodies are not in frantic motion, they are ironing their pants, putting perfect creases in their trousers to symbolize their elegance, and at least one pair of fellows can play a mean game of chess.

The conflict arises when Sgt. Lavant becomes increasingly envious of one of the guys, Gilles Sentain, a tall, well-built, handsome recruit who is admired by the men and who, in one instance, becomes a hero when he rescues a flier from a downed chopper. Determined to make life miserable for him, the sergeant contrives a plan that he hopes will lead to the legionnaire's death.

The movie is inspired by Herman Melville's "Billy Budd," which every junior high kid in America must have had to read at one time. "Billy Budd" was about a midshipman who was a stabilizing influence on the rough crew of a merchant ship. When he is taken aboard the "Indomitable," he is popular with all the officers and crew except John Claggart, the master-at- arms, who is envious of Billy's almost perfect physique and personality. But whereas Melville's story was about an innocent youth trapped in the brutality of fleet regulations or, perhaps, one who represents truth and beauty trapped by the wickedness of the world, the crew in which Sentain finds himself is a well-behaved troupe that needed no particular stabilizing, making the viewer wonder exactly why the sergeant hated him so much. Sentain is not overwhelmingly worshipped by the men, who give their allegiance freely to the sergeant, and therefore Galoup's behavior is tough to accept.

The story takes a back seat, however, to the poetry of the filmmaking. "Beau Travail" makes its points with minimal use of dialogue, allowing the images to convey the Spartan nature of life in such a remote region, a man's world, and nicely juxtaposes the scenes of the local women exhibiting their body moves with the more aggressive and testosterone- enkindled mobility of the men.

    Not Rated.  Running Time: 90 minutes.  (C) 1999
    Harvey Karten

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