France,
1999, 90 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
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Claire Denis
- prod
-
Jerome Minet
- scr
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Jean-Pol Fargeau, Claire Denis
- cam
-
Agnès Godard
- editor
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Nelly Quetier
- cast
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Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin
- source
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New Yorker Films, 16 West 61st St., New York, NY 10023. FAX: 212-307-7855. WORLD SALES: Mercure Distribution, 27, rue de la Butte aux Cailles, 75013 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-45-65-07-47.
infos@mercure-distribution.fr
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COMMENTS
Claire Denis in person.
OTHER
Claire Denis adds a new visual dimension to her work with this lyrical adaptation of Herman Melville’s allegorical Billy Budd, which is shifted from the battling British navy of 1797 to the superfluous French Foreign Legion of 1999. On the African coast, in a nameless country of paradisiacal beauty and hellish poverty, a detachment of legionnaires—all young, poorly educated and fleeing France’s dismal economy—punish themselves with drills and training rituals to fight boredom. Numbed by the pointless routine, Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant, best known as Léos Carax’s alter ego in Boy Meets Girl and The Lovers on the Bridge) conceives an irrational hatred for Sentain (Grégoire Colin, The Dreamlife of Angels), a new recruit whose innate goodness perversely strikes Galoup as an affront. Denis films their conflict as if it were a displaced love affair, framing Galoup’s growing obsession within a homoerotic athletic display that suggests Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia. A sexual consummation is out of the question, and another resolution must be found. While little happens on the surface, Denis’s intense concentration and Agnès Godard’s dry, clear cinematography make Beau Travail hypnotic and suspenseful.
—Dave Kehr
FACTOID #125
According to the November 29, 1959 San Diego Union, The Village on the River was the first Dutch feature ever shown in the U.S. (at the Third San Francisco International Film Festival).
