The Class of 1999: 'Beau Travail'
The Class of 1999: 'Beau Travail'
Claire Denis does good work.
1999 was a historically great year for film and dramatic narrative as a whole. I’m using my 2024 to look back at, reconsider, and celebrate these stories as they all celebrate their 25th anniversaries. I recently re-reviewed The Sixth Sense; next up on the docket is American Beauty. But first… it’s time for…
Beau Travail - directed by Claire Denis - written by Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau - September 4, 1999
Claire Denis’ Beau Travail is a movie about alienation and loneliness - which, come to think of it, is another running theme of the movies on this list. Still, I’m not sure that any movie released in 1999 feels as destitute as Beau Travail. Nicolas Cage living as a widower hermit with just a truffle pig for a friend seems less alone than the characters in Beau Travail.
Beau Travail has an extremely sparse narrative (I can’t even imagine what the screenplay must have looked like on the page) that is very loosely based on Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Sailor. This story is conveyed by an Adjudant-Chef in the French Foreign Legion, Galoup as he looks back on his time stationed in the East African country Djibouti (Galoup is played by Denis Lavant, who American viewers may also know from his brilliant, chameleonic performance in Leos Carax’s 2012 film, Holy Motors). Galoup is all in on being a Legionnaire, and idolizes his superior officer, Commandant Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor, a veteran of Godard films like Le Petit Soldat and Jules et Jim). Galoup also has a relationship with a local woman, although she doesn’t exactly seem enthusiastic about it, and it’s implied at one point that she’s a sex worker and doesn’t have any real feelings for her lover.
The Legion’s ecosystem is disrupted by the arrival of Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin), a new recruit who turns out to be an exemplary soldier; he also happens to be a very attractive, charismatic young man. Sentain quickly earns the admiration of both his peers and Forestier, which makes Galoup seethe with jealousy.
Galoup subsequently starts being brutally hard on Sentain, making Sentain’s life a living hell. His obsession with and envy of Sentain reaches a fever pitch after Sentain saves another Legionnaires’ life, making him a hero. Unable to take it any longer, Galoup concocts a plan to kill Sentain by “turning Sentain’s own good nature against him,” as Hannah McGill puts it: he abuses a Black Legionnaire knowing that Sentain will disobey his superior officer and stand up for his peer; he then uses that altruistic disobedience as an excuse for punishment, stranding Sentain in the desert with a broken compass.
The plan works: Sentain never returns to the Legion base, and one of the Legionnaires spots discovers his compass being sold at a local market. Although we later see a group of local Djiboutians find Sentain in the desert, it’s a) unclear whether or not they rescue him and b) unclear whether or not we’re even witnessing something that happened or an event Galoup has imagined (remember, the whole story is told through his eyes). So we never learn whether Sentain died or simply deserted.
Regardless, Galoup’s ill intentions have become nakedly clear to everyone. Forestier sends Galoup back to France for a court-martial, effectively ending his career in the Legion.
The film ends with Galoup in Marseilles. He lays in bed gripping a gun before the movie abruptly cuts to him alone in a disco dancing to Corona’s “The Rhythm of the Night.” Is he actually at a disco? Has he killed himself and gone to some bizarre afterlife? I haven’t a clue, but it’s pretty clear that whatever is going on, Galoup is not a happy man.
Denis was born in France after World War II, but she spent much of her youth traveling Africa, where her father was a “colonial administrator” (a title I put in quotes only because it seems like a very nice name for an imperialist pencil pusher). It seems likely that such an experience would give any kid a distinct sense of “us” and “them,” and that’s certainly reflected in Beau Travail on both a micro level (the French Foreign Legion, at least as presented here, emphasizes anonymity and exile; these men have more or less severed ties with their pasts and, in some cases, their very identities) and a macro level (the film can definitely be read as a broader commentary on colonialism, cultural dislocation, social belonging, and the toxic effects of power and control).
To wit: Galoup is profoundly alone both despite and because of his dedication to the Legion and his role within its hierarchy. As McGill puts it:
“Quite what winds Galoup up so much about Sentain isn’t clear, but it seems to be the latter’s apparent contentment and ease in living. These are, implicitly, untoward character traits in a legionnaire, who ought to have been driven into exile by some stigma, trauma or misdeed. ‘He had no reason to be with us in the Legion,’ Galoup notes in the account that we see him penning after the events, heard as voiceover. By joining the Legion, Galoup deliberately isolated himself in a context where dysfunctionality is the norm – where he would meet no resistance to his theory that ‘we all have a trashcan deep within.’ The arrival of a loveable kid capable of using conventional social graces poses a threat to Galoup’s alternative social structure. Into this kingdom of the blind has walked a paragon possessed of perfect vision, and Galoup is none too keen on the prospect of being seen.”
Galoup may not want this social structure to be upended, but what he needs is to be as loved by the other Legionnaires as Sentain is. And while his desire for human connection is perfectly understandable, that desire is, paradoxically, what ultimately consumes and ruins him. His actions towards Sentain are intended to reassert his authority and preserve his sense of self within the Legion's structure, but in the end, they have the exact opposite effect.
Galoup’s inability to reconcile this inner conflict is also represented in the film’s homoeroticism. Although “nothing verifiably gay happens onscreen,” as Alex Ross puts it, Beau Travail sure does have a lot of lingering shots of exposed young male bodies, as though it were the arthouse version of Top Gun. I saw this movie the night it opened at the Quad in Manhattan, and I can tell you that everyone has pretty much always assumed that Galoup’s hatred of Sentain is rooted in the denial of his sexuality even though the true motivation for his abusive behavior is never revealed. Ross notes that Claggart, the Galoup corollary in Billy Budd, “is the archetypal self-hating gay villain,” and argues that Beau Travail is “a gorgeous relic of a period when gay desire could achieve only incomplete expression or had to be concealed altogether.” Seth Harris believes “that Galoup joined the Legion to try to outrun his homosexuality,” a theory that, though unsupported, fits in neatly with McGill’s interpretation of why Sentain’s presence so violently rankles Galoup.
Some critics, such as Matt Mazur, have argued that Beau Travail’s homoeroticism is problematic: “Homosexuality and homoeroticism becomes the key ‘other’ in Denis’ film… The director’s point of view could be read then as a reinforcing heterosexist gaze.” Although I don’t think that assertion is completely invalid, I believe it’s important to acknowledge that Galoup’s true motivations for being so abusive are never explicitly laid out; like Iago in Othello (who you could also argue is closeted and in love with the object of his ire), that’s part of what makes him such a fascinating character.
Regardless of why Galoup is the way he is, his sad psychological state is reflected in every aspect of the film’s aesthetic, natch. Denis and the film’s cinematographer, Agnès Godard (no relation to Jean-Luc), manage to constantly make every character seem segregated even when they’re together, filming characters at a great distance to make them look small, framing things in such a way as to obscure their faces, or placing them against the backdrop of a cloudless sky, as though they were literally floating in solitude (see: the shot at the top of this very essay). Djibouti itself is presented as a stark, arid land that is itself a metaphor for the characters’ inner desolation.
Additionally, the movie’s score, by Eran Tzur, is minimalist and used sparingly, further driving home the oh-so-lonely vibe: even sound seems to have abandoned the Legionnaires. When Denis does employ louder, more intrusive, and “traditional” music (for lack of a better term) - whether it’s “The Rhythm of the Night” or Benjamin Britten’s opera Billy Budd, also based on the Melville novella - it’s explosive by way of contrast, and it somehow makes those pieces of music seem depressing.
As I said in my introduction: of all of 1999’s lonely movies, this may be the loneliest. So overwhelmingly does it convey the sensation of estrangement that I find it difficult to watch. Believe it or not, I mean that as a compliment.