Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)

Denis Lavant, perhaps best known as the chimp-faced fire-eating street urchin in Leos Carax's ethereal Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, is cast here as a troubled former Foreign Legionnaire, the backstory of his self-torment forming the bulk of the film. On service in Djibouti, in a unit caught in a stasis of drills, whoring and ablutions, Lavant's character takes umbrage at the rise of a new arrival, popular and heroic, into the affections of his commanding officer.
This is no war film, probably largely due to a female director more concerned with the mechanics of backbiting and jealousy in a hierarchical structure than with derring-do. Not a Kathryn Bigelow soldier piece, in other words. It's soon apparent that entire hyperreal scenes serve to create an atmosphere of homoeroticism through which we come to understand that Lavant's bitterness is wholly driven by his repressed sexuality.
The plot itself could be written on a handkerchief. Denis's intention was to create a visual poem, not a conventional linear feature. To this end, there are instances of a captivating marriage of image and soundtrack. Unfortunately, it also suffocates under the inertness and impotence of its protagonist: a portrait of self-denied obsession will always run the risk of shutting the viewer out.

5/10