FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Claire Denis - Beau Travail 

Have you read Melville's Billy Budd? Beau Travail by Claire Denis may be called a homoerotic reworking in Africa. There is nothing left of the French occupation but darkness. We meet a group of mercenaries. They are stateless, never ask questions and proceed with relentless toughness and cruel brutality. This is what Beau Travail is about. Soldiers' lives. The film is strangely stylized. And beautiful - even if it sounds like a contradiction. Denis observes the male codes in the group and thus an intense drama is created in the midst of Africa's magnificent landscape. In this paradise, on the other hand, the male body is tested mercilessly and to the point of destruction. Just as the male soul is tested. You have to imagine this musically, because the film does not obey any common narrative principles. Sometimes, in the glistening midday sun, all this seems like a hallucination. Like when the men start dancing. At some point, during a birthday party, we notice that Denis' men are actually just children. But isn't that always the case?