Filmscreening: “Beau Travail”
Cinema at the Dortmunder U | Level 0
Beau Travail, Claire Denis, 1999, film still
A classic film by Claire Denis about the French Foreign Legion with a furious dance scene. Free admission.
Claire Denis | FR 1999 | 92 min | OmeU
With: Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Richard Courcet
Ex-sergeant Galoup remembers his time in the French Foreign Legion, somewhere on an outpost in the Gulf of Djibouti. A well-organised life that he enjoys sharing with his men. When a new recruit attracts the attention of his commanding officer, Galoup decides to put his rival out of action. The plan fails. Galoup has to leave the Foreign Legion and returns to Marseille.
‘Beau travail is a choreographic film in which the danciness of the staging owes itself to a ‘microcosm’ located on the border between Africa and Asia, but also between cinema and literature, gaze and voice. Claire Denis depicts the adventures of a Foreign Legion troop stationed in Djibouti. But this adventure, in the truest sense of the word, is told retrospectively, from the point of view of one of the protagonists, Sergeant Galoup (excellently played by Denis Lavant), who was expelled from the Foreign Legion for disobeying orders. This disobedience is a violation of the laws of a world in which every step is precisely defined, measured and mapped out according to irrevocable rules.’ Thierry Jousse
