Movie Review – Beau Travail

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Beau Travail (1999)
Written by Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by Claire Denis

Everything about Beau Travail is felt rather than intellectualized. It’s a movie spilling over with texture & an evocation of the senses. So much of the tension on screen is never acknowledged in words but through visual language. In some ways, it is close to a silent film in how much restraint is used in the dialogue. It is an erotic film in the classical definition of eros as the aspect of love we call desire. The main character wants another so badly, but due to the circumstances of their jobs & where they are, this isn’t going to happen. We know this is a tragedy, but like watching two cars about to collide, there is little you can do but bear witness. It is a movie born out of defiance on the part of the director, a challenge to heteronormative masculinity that never preaches its themes to you. Those emerge organically, and it’s the job of the audience to examine & contemplate them.

Adjudant-Chef Galoup (Denis Lavant) remembers serving with the French Foreign Legion. He was stationed in the African country of Djibouti. The aspects of Galoup’s past are slowly revealed as the layers get peeled back. He deeply admired his superior, Commander Forestier (Michel Subor). Galoup even had an African girlfriend with whom he went out dancing when he was given time off. Things change with the arrival of Sentain (Grégoire Colin), a new recruit. Something makes Galoup hate this man, a passionate anger that even he doesn’t fully understand. 

Sentain shows empathy towards his fellow soldiers to the point that Galoup physically assaults the recruit when he tries to give water to a punished comrade. Sentain is punished by being sent out across the salt flats to find his way home, carrying a compass he does not know Galoup has tampered with. Sentain doesn’t die; he’s rescued by locals but never returns to his base. The Commander puts Galoup on trial for the presumed murder of his subordinate, which leads to the man’s expulsion from the Legion. Galoup spends the rest of his days alone, still making his bed in the way he was taught while serving, having only his memories, and occasionally dancing alone in an empty, run-down club.

Claire Denis has been one of several directors commissioned by a French television station to make movies centered on the theme of “foreign lands.” As she often does, Denis went in a wildly different direction than expected and wanted to make a film that explored what it is like to be a French person in a foreign land and the experience of being foreign to oneself. While French, Denis was raised across Africa, the daughter of a military man. By placing her characters outside their preferred environment, she explores how they begin to discover things about themselves that unsettle them and cause them to become increasingly more defensive, Galoup especially.

Galoup is desperate to be the preferred officer for Forestier. When Sentain comes along, having gained Forestier’s respect through brave actions during a helicopter crash, Galoup sees his position being threatened. The fact that we see this as a series of flashbacks from a slightly older, much sadder Galoup living in France reveals a truth to us. The man will likely never get over this period, always contemplating what he lost and slightly scared, to be honest with himself about why he behaved so irrationally. 

Denis is also evoking other forms of art, the story based off of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and incorporating musical pieces from a ballet based on that novella during scenes of the men’s training. Forestier is also a character in a Godard film about a French Foreign Legion deserter played by the same actor in 1963. In this regard, I see Denis as a master of adaptation. She understands this is not a 1:1 process; adaptation is about getting to the original work’s core themes and character beats and reinterpreting them through the chosen medium. The film is not a novel, so you don’t tell stories similarly. 

My read of Beau Travail is that Galoup joined the Legion to try to outrun his homosexuality. The movie is never so overt, making it such a compelling piece of art. We can know this about Galoup through the language of cinema. He is enamored with Forestier, but it’s unclear if that is fatherly or something more. Galoup’s African girlfriend seems to understand something suspicious about her lover; he doesn’t show his entire self to her. Sentain is physically perfect and a reminder of the hunger Galoup has spent his whole life tamping down. Ironically, joining an exclusively male military branch is probably not the best way to stifle homosexual feelings. Denis’s camera agrees as it pans over male bodies in multiple scenes. There’s a sequence of men practicing hand-to-hand combat where the music and slow motion transform grappling into a collection of hugs, men becoming intimate with each other.

Sentain is everything you would want in the archetype of a noble soldier. He is brave and genuinely cares for others. He is physical perfection but also quiet, an enigma. Forestier’s joy at having such a man in his ranks enrages Galoup. He ironically tells the other men that Sentain “had no reason to be with us in the Legion.” Galoup’s view of humanity is quite cynical, stating, “We all have a trashcan deep within.” Sentain is a symbol of defiance towards this ideology. The young man’s presence reminds Galoup of all his self-loathing, how he has tried so hard to transform himself into the person Sentain actually is. Galoup will never be Sentain because he cannot be honest with himself. Denis successfully delivers her theme of “foreignness to oneself” in this regard, a protagonist who is terrified to face what is within and lashes out externally. 

A male director couldn’t have made the movie as well as this. You needed the perspective of someone foreign to being male, but not the acts and rituals of masculinity. Denis sees things men do not or choose not to see. The camera becomes the truth-teller, contrasting Galoup’s warped narrative. Denis finds absurdity in the Legion; the men do not belong in this foreign land and invent excuses why they are needed there. If Frenchness is so wonderful, why not stay in France? It’s the eyes of the native people, the Africans, who see beyond the facade presented to them by the French. In some moments, they seem to float above the soldiers, revealing whose perspective is more full & robust. 

Beau Travail’s finale leaves a lot of questions. Is Galoup embracing the parts of himself he has denied for so long? Is this a final dance before death? Is the scene literally happening at all, or is something coming out of the man’s mind? Does he kill himself? Denis’s instructions to Lavant before shooting the scene were simple; it was to be “the dance between life and death.” It was a moment of confluence, where Galoup’s many aspects emerged and must make a reckoning. And appropriately, the audience is not allowed to know that resolution. The only finality we can understand in these terms is our own; how do we account for and understand the myriad identities within us? How does our dance end?