The Foreign Legionnaire
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Foreign Legionnaire |
| Original title | Beau Travail |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1999 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Claire Denis |
| script | Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau |
| production | Patrick Grandperret |
| music | Eran Tzur |
| camera | Agnes Godard |
| cut | Nelly Quettier |
| occupation | |
| |
The Foreign Legionnaire (original title: Beau Travail ) is a French feature film by Claire Denis from 1999 .
action
A group of young legionnaires in the Gulf of Djibouti are loyal to their instructor, Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant). Galoup knows nothing but the army and its task, but order is disturbed by the young soldier Sentain (Grégoire Colin).
In an effort to get rid of Sentain, Galoup sets up a trap that results in him committing a disciplinary violation. As a punishment, Galoup abandons him alone in the salt desert, but first hands Sentain a broken compass so that he cannot find his way back to camp.
Commander Bruno Forestier forces Galoup to leave the Legion and takes him to a military tribunal in France, even when Sentain is found and rescued by a group of locals. Back in Marseille, Galoup sees no future for himself outside of the Legion. The penultimate scene suggests Galoup's suicide in a hotel room in Djibouti. The film ends with an energetic dance scene from Galoups to The Rhythm of the Night by Corona .
Emergence
Claire Denis produced The Foreign Legionnaire as a commissioned film for the TV station Arte on the subject of strangeness.
Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau wrote the script in three steps. First they wrote a draft as Galoups diary and wrote the actual script as a counter-draft. Denis wrote the spoken text off-screen, inspired by her memory of Jean-Luc Godard's The Little Soldier (1960).
Film analysis
intertextuality
The screenplay for The Foreign Legionnaire is inspired by Herman Melville's story Billy Budd . Galoup is the equivalent of Claggart in Melville's tale, while Forestier plays Captain Vere and Sentain Billy Budd. Sequences from Benjamin Britten's implementation of the narrative as an opera underline several scenes in the film.
The cast and naming of Commander Bruno Forestier refers to Godard's The Little Soldier . In this film, Michel Subor also played a character with the same name. Jonathan Rosenbaum observes that the Foreign Legionnaire juxtaposes everyday banalities of tragedy and violence , like Godard's film and Alain Resnais ' Muriel or Die Zeit der Wiederkehr (1963), both of which are set against the backdrop of the Algerian War. In contrast to the two Nouvelle Vague films, The Foreign Legionnaire is clearly post-colonial , for example due to the multiethnic composition of the Legion.
Staging of physicality and masculinity
The Foreign Legionnaire contains several scenes in which the legionnaires follow regular, coordinated and routine endurance and strength exercises with a naked torso. Denis leans on contemporary dance in her ritualized portrayal of the Legion's training and has engaged the choreographer Bernardo Montet , who also plays one of the legionnaires himself. The almost complete lack of dialog makes Foster compare the dramaturgy of the film with musical theater . She calls The Foreign Legionnaire a "male musical" .
The bodies of the legionnaires are represented objectified and function as “speechless, performative vehicles of the masculine arts” , determined by Galoup's narrative perspective . It is he who speaks off-screen and reads excerpts from his diary. Foster explains that Galoup "is so consumed with jealousy and self-hatred that he can only share his troubled and lustful memories with us" . His suppressed homosexual lust and emotional exaggeration direct the objectifying gaze to the male body and the aesthetic exaggeration of the training. The military, in its exaggeration of comradeship, solidarity and love among men, must constantly break free from the taboo of homosexuality and thus create a homoerotic and homophobic context at the same time. The jealousy of Forestier, whose attention Sentain attracts, drives Galoup to abandon Sentain in the desert. Only with the final dance scene can Galoup break away from the contradicting context of the Legion and thus from the suppression of his sexuality.
reception
The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 1999 and was shown the following year at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlinale , among others .
criticism
The film enjoys an excellent reputation among many film critics. In the ten-year survey of the British film magazine Sight & Sound on the best films among critics and film directors, The Foreign Legionnaire was voted 78th and 91st place respectively.
The FAZ certified the film at the International Film Festival in Berlin in 2000 in the International Forum of New Cinema , a "style height and density, reach the Forum a few feature films." The Swiss newspaper Le Temps praises: "Claire Denis films the men in an unprecedented Sensuality and a mixture of naivety and pride ... one of the best films of the year ” .
The newspaper Liberation sees this work as “Claire Denis' most physical, most visually powerful film” .
Awards
Agnès Godard won the César and Chlotrudis Awards for her camera work . She was nominated for the European Film Award for this. Minor awards at some film festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam , were also awarded to the film.
Web links
- The Foreign Legion in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The legionnaire atRotten Tomatoes(English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Hannah McGill: Blood and sand: Beau Travail ( Memento of the original from December 12, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Sight & Sound , May 2012.
- ↑ Desire Is Violence . Interview with Claire Denis in Sight & Sound .
- ↑ a b Jonathan Rosenbaum: Unsatisfied Men . In: Chicago Reader , May 25, 2000.
- ↑ a b c Gwendolyn Audrey Foster: Performing Whiteness: Postmodern Re / Constructions in the Cinema , pp. 110, 112.
- ↑ Foster, p. 114.
- ↑ Foster, p. 115.
- ↑ Beau Travail on The Greatest Films Poll by Sight & Sound
