Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Grumpy Now I did it. My overblown ratings of other films by other directors make it impossible to properly rank the films of Claire Denis on any kind of rational scale. I've given Hollywood films a "ten" rating. By that standard, Denis makes films where the ratings should range from twelve to twenty. I'll give "Beau Travail" a rating of 18 (not twenty--I don't want to make the same mistake again and paint myself into another corner).It is simply not possible to explain how this genius has transformed my view of cinema. There is no pretense here. I am amazed at nearly every scene in a kind of collage of images and sounds. Denis takes the "military life" and turns it on its own homophobic head and produces the work of art. Viola! It's so far outside of our daily experience that it mirrors, not daily life, but that daily mental circus we call our minds. Claire Denis is like a U.S. major league pitcher throwing heat. You can either hit major league pitching or you can't. You either get this "type" of film or you don't.(But with time and maturity I think that anyone can come to understand this greatest of this generation's filmmakers. So don't despair if you are twenty-something horrified at what appears to be pretentious nonsense. Wait a while. With time comes understanding.) The characters in "Beau Travail" are in the French Foreign Legion but they are also representative of all soldiers. They are intensely motivated by hormonal secretions and cultural institutions. They are thrown into the winds of internal fires and drowned out by external tsunamis. They are young and dumb and believe they are immortal, and by golly, they seem to be just that. The conflicts that arise often seem petty and putrid when viewed from without, but from within these same conflicts fairly glow with the heat of pride and glory. No "psychological" analysis can reveal the essence of such conflict. No "homoerotic" projections can drain the sap from this tree of life.To be a soldier is transcendent. To be a failure as a soldier is to be thrown back into the ordinary world, and in some ways to fail at existence itself. It's not about "morality" but it is about truth and courage and honor and the real essence of what motivates us all. Dreams, not reality, are what we will remember when we cross over into the afterlife. Here, at the end of ordinary thought, we begin our journey into the mind of one individual and the daily, moment-by-moment living of life that he is loath to do. Man confronted by the pale and washed-out image, that is supposed to the here and now, but is only the after-image of life.I viewed this film without subtitles in the French language and I don't speak much French. It's not a movie about "blah blah." Let your third eye drink it in. Stop filtering what you hear and see. Free your mind.

FilmCriticLalitRao Most films which have depicted 'French legion' have been American productions. They have been able to given an American perspective of French military scene. After 'Fort Saganne' (1984) directed by late Alain Corneau, 'Beau Travail' is the second French film made in recent times which talks about the French legion (La Légion Etrangère), a military service wing of the French Army which was established in 1831. French legion is considered absolutely unique as it was created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. It continues to attract numerous soldiers who are willing to show their valor during critical missions. Although this film has a regular story as well as a conventional plot, it does not easily fit into the mold of regular French films as its narrative device is completely different from other films made in France. One would not find any chatty characters willing to set tongues wagging. Despite having directed a feature film director Claire Denis has been able to give a 'documentary' type feel to her film. It helps viewers to understand the world in which the protagonists live. A good selection of nice musical tracks is this film's principal strengths. It helps viewers to get closer to one of film's important characters. Lastly, 'Beau Travail' is a good example of a fairly ambitious film which has come as close as possible to a documentary film.

nycritic Every so often a movie comes out that conflicts me, and these are the movies that take me quite a while to analyze. Sometimes it will take a second view to see if I missed some vital element, or it will dawn on me later, and thus I will have grasped what it was that at the moment seemed rather inconsequential. BEAU TRAVAIL, Claire Denis' 1999 film, is one of these movies. It is an adaptation of Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" -- although adaptation should be expressed in a loose term. It tells the story of an army troop stationed at Djibouti, training endlessly under the firm hand of a nearly expressionless Denis Lavant, himself a training machine, and the arrival of a young soldier played by the very beautiful Gregoire Colin who becomes the catalyst that triggers a response from Lavant. Colin, as Sentain, is the young rookie everyone loves and admires; he has great beauty and is the epitome of masculinity. This ticks Lavant's Galoup to approach Sentain at an oblique angle, and a scene in which both men face off resembles that of two lions about to attack and is a sequence of immense beauty because you see the hardened expression on Lavant's leonine face pitted against Colin's frightened yet set facade. This is what cinema is supposed to do: tell a story without too much dialogue, maybe a voice-over here or there as BEAU TRAVAIL does, and then get to its denouement, which in this movie is made more ironic than tragic. Where it falters a little is in its portentous score with a male chorus which is lifted from the opera version: it's too intrusive and is reminiscent of the score used for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but there it had a purpose; here, I didn't see it. Frequent incursions into dance music also distract a little from the meat of the story. What I do admire is Denis' approach to the material. In bringing a strong homoerotic element to the scene, she also manages to do what few gay directors have done: create a visually mesmerizing work of art where male passion is expressed through what is appropriate of the gender: physical activity. It's what I've always wanted to see: an aggressive ballet of masculine energy which unfolds a deceptively simple story of attraction, repulsion, and envy. Highly recommended.

alibis claire denis portrays the French Foreign Legion from a feminine viewpoint. the result is a beautiful, sensual, almost sexy movie, i especially liked the way the bodies of the men were depicted. it is absolutely necessary to watch this movie in the cinema, on the small screen it loses its most important factor, that is the visual aspect. the dancing is poetic, but not at all realistic. the degree of artistic abstraction concerning the army leads to some irritation for some people which have actually been to the army, because they know that it is far from reality. the problem altogether is that beau travail is probably not going to make a lasting impression on most people, because it plays with superficial emotions.