Beau travail (1998)

Claire Denis’s great gift is to evoke emotion with gesture and juxtaposition. In the desert, water shimmers and ripples, naked shoulders perspire, black mosquito nets recall sheer lingerie.

The first time I watched Beau travail, on DVD, in my childhood bedroom, in the spring of 2014, I didn’t know how it would end. My face split into a grin of disbelief as the credits rolled and I rewound the final scene. More than 20 years after its initial release, that set piece, soundtracked by Corona’s 90s Eurodance hit ‘The Rhythm of the Night’, with its climactic burst of feeling, is as well-known as the film itself.

It started as a sort of joke. Claire Denis was commissioned by the TV network Arte to make a film about foreignness and so, wryly, provocatively, she made a movie in which her own people were the foreigners. In Marseille, Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time as ‘a perfect legionnaire’ in Djibouti, East Africa, serving the French Foreign Legion. He and his soldiers, including the undeniably pretty and unusually well-liked Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin), perform highly choreographed military drills in the desert heat. Under the blazing sun, resentments simmer. In the evenings, the men dance at a nightclub with the local women, who are beautiful, modern and ambivalent. Djibouti, a former French colony, gained independence in 1977. These soldiers are irrelevant; the colonial project is obsolete. ‘Unfit for life, unfit for civilian life’ is how Galoup describes himself in his diary.

But feeling unmoored from one’s purpose – feeling like a foreigner to your own life – is a timeless conundrum, and one that seems to resonate with both film lovers and filmmakers (Barry Jenkins has mentioned its influence on 2016’s Moonlight). It remains Denis’s only true crowd-pleaser.

Denis’s great gift is her ability to evoke emotion with gesture and juxtaposition. In the Djibouti desert, water shimmers and ripples, naked shoulders perspire and black mosquito nets recall sheer lingerie. In a Claire Denis film, dialogue is sparse, but images are charged with meaning. ‘Making films, for me, is to get rid of explanation,’ she told the Guardian back in 2000.

The final scene is pure release: a wordless explanation after 90 minutes of tension. Visual references travel through quotations in other works and, in recent times, through the internet. Films are portioned up and divorced from their original contexts, re-appropriated and shared as memes. I wonder if the renewed popularity of Beau travail in this decade’s Greatest Films poll is a result of its increased visibility among a younger generation, many of whom have likely encountered, or at least revisited, its euphoric dancefloor-set conclusion via their computers.

Simran Hans

1998 France
Directed by
Claire Denis
Produced by
Jérôme Minet, Patrick Grandperret
Written by
Jean-Pol Fargeau, Claire Denis
Featuring
Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin
Running time
93 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Beau travail

Critics

Inka Achté
Finland
Jason Anderson
Canada
Geoff Andrew
UK
Marina Ashioti
UK/Cyprus
Jon Asp
Sweden
Alejandro Bachmann
Austria
Nicholas Baer
Netherlands
Cameron Bailey
Canada
Cecilia Barrionuevo
Argentina
Adam Batty
UK
Alasdair Bayman
UK
Andreas Busche
Germany
Esther Buss
Germany
Kambole Campbell
UK
Lauren Carroll Harris
Australia
Tom Charity
Canada/UK
Saibal Chatterjee
India
Jake Cole
USA
Robbie Collin
UK
Sarah Cooper
UK
Abiba Coulibaly
UK
Barbara Creed
Australia
Shane Danielsen
USA
Laura Dos Santos
UK
Jamie Dunn
UK
Bilge Ebiri
Turkey/USA
Javier H. Estrada
Spain
Lizzie Francke
UK
Suzy Gillett
UK
Aswathy Gopalakrishnan
India
Catherine Grant
UK
Malini Guha
Canada
Malte Hagener
Germany
Lindsay Hallam
UK
Fionnuala Halligan
UK
Rahul Hamid
US
Simran Hans
UK
Marián Hausner
Slovakia
Philippa Hawker
Australia
Vinzenz Hediger
Germany
Bruce Hodsdon
Australia
Jonas Holmberg
Sweden
Eric Hynes
USA
Wendy Ide
UK
Grazia Ingravalle
UK
Dina Iordanova
Bulgaria/UK
Brian Jacobson
USA
Frédéric Jaeger
Germany
Shanay Jhaveri
India
Dominik Kamalzadeh
Austria
Sarah K Keller
USA
Jessica Kiang
Germany
Daniel Kothenschulte
Germany
Jay Kuehner
USA
Michel Lipkes
Mexico
Kjetil Lismoen
Norway
Guy Lodge
UK/South Africa
Laura Lux
Luxembourg
Łukasz Mańkowski
Poland
Giovanni Marchini Camia
Italy/Switzerland/Germany
Lee Marshall
UK/Italy
Ross McDonnell
Ireland
Hind Mezaina
United Arab Emirates
Riina Mikkonen
Finland
Jane Mills
Australia
Jelena Mišeljić
Montenegro
Isabel Moir
UK
Nashen Moodley
Australia
Andrea Morán
Spain
Wesley Morris
USA
Cristina Nord
Germany
Derek O'Connor
Ireland
Hannah Patterson
UK
Savina Petkova
Bulgaria/UK
Hannah Pilarczyk
Germany
Sven Pötting
Germany
Caitlin Quinlan
UK
Kiva Reardon
USA
Bert Rebhandl
Germany
Jeff Reichert
USA
Kong Rithdee
Thailand
Ben Roberts
UK
Selina Robertson
UK
Jonathan Romney
UK
Shelagh Rowan-Legg
Canada
Caspar Salmon
UK
Libby Saxton
UK
Girish Shambu
USA
David Sims
USA
Ana Siqueira
Brazil
Mikaela Smith
UK
Martin Stollery
UK
Hannah Strong
UK
Anna Swanson
Canada
José Teodoro
Canada
Irene Torp Halvorsen
Norway
Andrew Tracy
Canada
Müge Turan
Turkey
Belén Vidal
UK
Jendrik Walendy
Germany
Saige Walton
Australia
Catherine Wheatley
UK
Patricia White
USA
Jessica Winter
USA
Jason Wood
UK
Rowan Woods
UK

Directors

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović
Mahalia Belo
UK
Joseph Bull
UK
Atom Egoyan
Canada
Sky Hopinka
USA
Annemarie Jacir
Palestine
Barry Jenkins
USA
Kirsten Johnson
USA
Aneil Karia
UK
Rainer Kohlberger
Germany/Austria
Justin Kurzel
Australia
Isaki Lacuesta
Spain
Nanouk Leopold
Carlos Marqués-Marcet
Spain
Gabriel Mascaro
Brazil
Fisnik Maxville
Switzerland
Steve McQueen
UK
May Miles Thomas
UK
Phyllis Nagy
US
Tadhg O'Sullivan
Ireland
Georgia Oakley
Kiyong Park
South Korea
Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra
Mexico
Marta Popivoda
Serbia
Kivu Ruhorahoza
Rwanda
Isabel SANDOVAL
USA
Shaunak Sen
Anocha Suwichakornpong
Thailand

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