Review of Beau Travail (2000) by Quiche E — 16 Aug 2008

[center][size=3]"Begging for a word, a Gesture"[/size].

[size=3] Beau Travail[/size].

[size=3] Directed by Claire Denis[/size].

[size=3] 1999[/size].

[size=3]For the longest time, the camera sits and observes the most banal things happening in Beau Travail, allowing nothing to happen, nothing to develop. Beau Travail's effective portrait of nothing is why the film works. Early on in the film, the squadron storms a building so barren, nothing could possibly hide in it, the building is concrete pillars, an abandoned parking lot, or an unfinished office building, something left alone to be overtaken by the desert a long time ago. The soldiers are products of something that happened a long time ago, they're like the desert they exist in. Empty, and full of lost hopes. The other important motif here is the dance club in the one city, the dance club at first feels like an area of release, but close attention reveals the expressions of boredom, even the parties in this film are part of repetition.[/size].

[size=3]The English title Good Work is suiting for the film, the film would be a void without work, work is the only thing keeping the soldiers here, work is the focus of their lives, day in and day out. Galoup's first words in the film being ?I have time to kill now?, his life was work and as we watch him pursue tasks so endlessly dull, the viewer starts to understand that the film is not a movie with a narrative base, but one with focus on rituals, many scenes solely focus on ritual exercise, folding clothes and the such with none or very little dialogue. The dialogue is secondary to action. This is a film of action and the meanings underneath the action. The meanings and motifs of the images in Beau Travail are harder to pick apart. Feelings of rancor permeate Galoup's existence, he keeps on working to fight off his desire for Sentain, who's youth attracts the other men in the squadron to him. It's these subtly played emotions which draw us in. But the viewer stays around for the rewarding experience Beau Travail offers. Interactions seem small, but carry a lot of weight, Galoup's rancor for Sentain becomes the focus of Galoup's work, Sentain is his work. Most of the information is relayed through Galoup's stream of conscious, making his angle the film's angle. The view is so outwardly narrow in it's appearance, yet open in it's interpretation of alienation, sexuality and the inner workings of a character who is essentially a drone stuck working in a landscape that France forgot about.[/size].

[size=3] Visually, the film is rapturous, you can practically taste the dirt, Denis has a sense of poetic realism, this poetic realism fits the film's tone. We watch a dozen men walk across a valley of boulders and rocks, the sea in the distance. The sea is very important to Beau Travail, the land is dry and filled with nothingness, but the Sea is filled the emotions in the psyche of the characters. And like the sea, it has depth.[/size][/center].