Beau Travail (Sub)

Starring:Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, GrÃ©goire Colin, Richard Courcet, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Adiatou Massudi, Mickael Ravovski, Dan Herzberg, Giuseppe Molino, Gianfranco Poddighe, Marc Veh, Thong Duy Nguyen, Jean-Yves Vivet, Bernardo Montet, Dimitri Tsiapkinis, Djamel Zemali, Abdelkader Bouti, Marta Tafesse Kassa, Loula Ali Lotta, Ali Mohammed Hamadou
Director: Claire Denis
Studio: New Yorker Video
Product Type: DVD

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The movies of French director Claire Denis (I Can't Sleep, Trouble Every Day) are magical to some viewers and maddening to others because of the indirect way she tells her stories. Plot and character are revealed through what feel like inconsequential moments, while the important events seem to happen between the scenes. Beau Travail is more accessible than most, partly because of the simplicity of its plot (a jealous Foreign Legion sergeant ruins his own career when his beloved commander becomes fond of a young recruit) but mostly because of the vividness of its imagery, particularly sensuous shots of muscular men sweating in the sun or swimming in the ocean. It's unabashedly homoerotic, but it's also a compelling portrait of the basic emotional drives felt by men in extreme circumstances. --Bret Fetzer

Description

Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Beau Travail is the most provocative and accomplished film yet by French director Claire Denis (Chocolat, I Can't Sleep, Nenette and Boni). Set against the stunning East African enclave of Djibouti, Beau Travail follows a troupe of men in a small French Foreign Legion outpost. Exercising their muscular torsos under the blaring sun, each day the Legionnaires engage in a hypnotically choreographed routine of drills, chores, and mock battles. Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant) seems the ideal Legionnaire: a brooding loner, cut off from his past. He runs the troupe like a well-oiled machine, until his jealously for a promising young recruit, Sentain, threatens the delicate balance of his life. With the haunting suspense of a Greek tragedy, Galoup's uncontrollable urge to destroy Sentain ultimately leads to his own downfall.

Customer Reviews:

Talk about a woman who loves to focus on the male body........2007-05-10

Even though I've seen quite a few French films this seems to be one of better ones. Is this movie slow pace?, yes but it's done for a reason. While viewing this you can tell that director Claire Denis had a tight budget and limited technical resources when this film was shot, but her fecund imagination and masterful directorial skills don't let those constraints appear on the screen. Visually, Beau Travail is rich in telling imagery, stunning settings, and powerful contrasts. Narrated in voiceover by the central character, Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant), Beau Travail uses minimal dialogue in telling a story that is simply plotted, but complicated in overtones and undertones, much of which is provided by subtle suggestion and richly ambiguous imagery. Running throughout like a leitmotif are shots of the squad of legionnaires in rigorous exercise and military training exercises, as well as attending to the daily rituals of laundry, bathing, and shaving.

The exercise sequences are highly choreographed. Whether engaged in yoga-like movements, or crawling under barbed wire, or traversing rope like high wire artists against the tropical blue sky, Denis mines the images of these lean, hard, half-naked men to make her points. Accompanying much of this footage with music from Britten's Billy Budd adds intensity and a further ritualistic strangeness to the mix.Into the status quo enters a newcomer, Sentain (Gregoire Colin), who proves to be popular with the other men and with the commander, Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor). Galoup's jealousy is aroused, and with the inevitability of Greek myth, the events unfold. The script throws in a passing line to the effect that Subor has been dogged by rumors, but the rumors are unspecified. His admiration for Sentain is expressed indirectly, verbally, but nothing happens between them. Still, through it all, the subtext of homoerotic love is palpably present, a given of the situation which remains unarticulated.

There are sequences, as well, of the men in town, largely nighttime scenes in a local discotheque, where the men mix with local black women. The music and dancing are charged, but the sexuality is largely implied. A brief scene nicely establishes Galoup's tender relationship with his woman. The relationship of blacks to whites and the place of blacks in the colonial setting is otherwise left unexplored, aside from a variety of images of the natives quietly going through their day-to-day lives in the austere environment. The latter strongly contrasts with the legionnaires' style of defying the same environment, with their grueling exercise under the hot sun, their fitted and primly creased uniforms challenging the heat and humidity.

In telling her story, Denis, through incidents and imagery, offers more to think about in her disciplined ninety minutes than other directors manage in twice the time. The former Russian soldier who has joined the Legion complains of having fought for an ideal that kept changing, while Subor, the ultimate professional soldier, claims no ideals at all. He, though, is addicted to kat, the narcotic leaf that the natives chew. The idea of the Legion as family, variations on themes of competitiveness (combat, games of chess and billiards) and the ever present questions of life, death, and mortality are offered in a rich mix, an object lesson in thoughtful filmmaking. Highly recommended.

NICE BODYS,BUT NOT A GREAT PLOT.......2006-07-01

This movie is quite slow, for those who are expecting a gay film, this is not, it may under certain circunstances, but is more about tehe foreign legion in Africa. I saw it once, that was enough, I wouldn not recomended it

A very personal experience.......2005-10-31

This movie is maddeningly slow. You really have to really be a certain kind of person to appreciate where Claire Denis is going here, and you have to willing to come along for the ride--the entire ride. I got it, and I loved it--but I also recognize that I'm probably in the minority.

Editorial reviews on the pretentious-side (e.g. the New Yorker) didn't have enough good things to say about Beau Travail. More down-to-earth reviews had a "What the heck???" feel to them.

For me, it was fortunate that I watched Beau Trvail in the theater--I was forced to yield a slice of my life over to the film. Being in an open and pensive mood also helped. Even then, it wasn't so much the movie itself but how it made me feel afterwards. It grew on me like a fungus, the neurons trying to process all of the subtext behind what (at the time) just seemed like 90 minutes of desert. After a few weeks, I found myself aching to connect again with the film, digesting every review I could find. The subway scenes peppered throughout the movie are telling, as are the forlorn Legionnaires singing of their lost-love. When the resolution comes, it is abrupt and powerful.

But this was a very personal experience, and my connection with the film probably says more about me as a person than anything about Beau Travail itself. Denis' "Friday Night" follows nearly the same pattern, but I found that film just as maddeningly slow but without the payoff.

A Puzzle.......2005-07-15

"Beau Travail" or English translation of "Good Work" by French director Claire Denis is an interesting look at the Foreign Legion. However, the story fails to fire and takes an incredibly long time to do so. Despite showing the soldiers training and climbing over walls, scaling wires and jumping hurdles, there really is no action since none of this furthers the story. Even the helicopter crash is not shown, just bits of debris and people floating in the water afterward. Denis Lavant who was in "A Very Long Engagement" that was nominated for best foreign film last year plays Galoup, who prizes his relationship with his commanding officer Bruno Forestier. When young Sentain comes into camp played by Gregoire Colin, Galoup becomes jealous and tries to discredit him. That said, it's hard to say why Galoup is jealous. Forestier is played by Michel Subor who worked with Denis in her film "L'Intrus" (The Intruder). There doesn't appear to be any sexual relationship between these men, despite Denis' focus on photographing them without shirts, swimming nude and showering. The real star of the film is the stark landscape of the Gulf of Djibouti. (I had to look it up on my map to find it near Ethiopia & Somalia on the Red Sea.) The disco sequence at the end of the film is nice, but it comes after we see Galoup on a bed with a gun in his hand. Did he kill himself & go to disco heaven? Did he decide not to shoot himself & go dancing by himself instead? The project is a puzzle that fails to come together. Taxi!

A Great Save.......2005-06-07

Ballet of bodies & souls on African desert & seacoast. Galoup, a foreign legion lifer perfects a structured existence, but becomes troubled by the popularity of a new recruit (a la Salieri in Amadeus). Galoup plots a revenge - horrible for its lack of a reason - everyman at his worst moment. The soul of humanity on the line, director Claire Denis makes a great save: the victim apparently survives, Galoup is symbolically banished to a tiny disco room with red lights - but he can dance! Galoup discovers the joy of expression - albeit alone - forever.

Average customer rating:

Don't miss
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, I COULD EAT YOU UP!

Trouble Every Day

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Friday Night
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Cache (Hidden)

ASIN: B000CE9PPU

Product Description

Shane and June Brown are an American couple honeymooning in Paris in an effort to nurture their new life together, a life complicated by Shane's mysterious and frequent visits to a medical clinic where cutting edge studies of the human libido are undertaken. When Shane seeks out a self-exiled expert in the field, he happens upon the doctor's wife, another victim of the same malady. She has become so dangerous and emotionally paralyzed by the condition that her husband imprisons her by day in their home. It is Shane's chance encounter with this woman that triggers an event so cataclysmic and shocking it might just lead him to rediscover the tranquility he seeks to restore for himself and his new bride.

Customer Reviews:

Don't miss.......2006-08-27

A voodoo-practitioner - Afro-French male doctor's sex-toy creature allowed leaving her locked room by a hypnotised curious intruder being consumed during copulating, is overpowered by a strong American happened to drop in into a doctor's house at the timing. He had since then fallen into her footsteps of a thirst for blood and flash during orgasm.

Perverted love of "Dracula" mixed with an unstoppable quest for sadist sex of "Frisk", framed with Parisian charm makes this terrific film realistic to a degree of a potential usage by anti-AIDS and pro-obscenity campaigners.

Highly recommended.

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, I COULD EAT YOU UP!.......2005-12-09

Love bites, literally. This utterly disturbing and obscure yet beautiful and tender film tells about people with a deviation - they can't love the way normal people do, they have this obsessive urge to devour their loved ones alive! Just like a female mantis or certain kind of female spiders devour their spouse right after copulating. For them love and sex are impossible without pain, blood and death.
Here we see a mentally-disturbed woman (played by Beatrice Dalle) who preys on men seduced be her sexuality, and a character of Vincent Gallo, who feels the need to bite, to gnaw and to suck blood of a girl he loves but he refrains himself (untill a certain moment) trying to be a reasonable man.
This stylish, wonderfully-paced and delicate movie shows the thin line between true love and sadism, between the desire to caress and to torment. It can have a huge effect on you because this lingering, viscous and sad film at times explodes with truly infernal and disturbing scenes which won't leave you indifferent. Speaking of disturbing images I can tell you "Trouble Every Day" has some of the most thrilling ones among all I've seen. Even if not for the gore itself you would be shuddered watching agony of a man being eaten during a coitus.
This is definately not an exploitation flick, watch it if you like dark and serious movies like "Irreversible".

Average customer rating:

Talk about a woman who loves to focus on the male body.
NICE BODYS,BUT NOT A GREAT PLOT
A very personal experience
A Puzzle
A Great Save

Beau travail [Region 2]
Starring: Denis Lavant , Michel Subor , Grégoire Colin , Richard Courcet , and Nicolas Duvauchelle
Director: Claire Denis
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( B ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B00004Y3PJ

Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

Talk about a woman who loves to focus on the male body........2007-05-10

NICE BODYS,BUT NOT A GREAT PLOT.......2006-07-01

A very personal experience.......2005-10-31

A Puzzle.......2005-07-15

A Great Save.......2005-06-07

Average customer rating:

Talk about a woman who loves to focus on the male body.
NICE BODYS,BUT NOT A GREAT PLOT
A very personal experience
A Puzzle
A Great Save

Beau travail [Region 2]
Starring: Denis Lavant , Michel Subor , Grégoire Colin , Richard Courcet , and Nicolas Duvauchelle
Director: Claire Denis
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( B ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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