Claire Denis’ Beau Travail is considered a masterpiece by many, hailed as “one of the best films of the 1990s” by critics who probably also enjoy watching sand trickle through an hourglass for spiritual reasons. It’s taught in film schools. It’s dissected in think-pieces. It’s got a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes sense if your definition of “excellent cinema” includes prolonged silence, glistening men, and zero narrative payoff. For everyone else? It’s 90 minutes of French military cosplay and vague feelings.
The story—or whatever passes for one—follows Galoup (Denis Lavant), a crusty sergeant in the French Foreign Legion stationed in Djibouti. Galoup’s job consists of yelling at shirtless men, doing pull-ups, and fuming internally like a tea kettle with daddy issues. He becomes obsessed with a new recruit, Sentain (Grégoire Colin), whose mere existence—stoic, handsome, heroic—drives Galoup into a spiral of jealousy, rage, and possibly lust. Possibly. It’s never clear. Denis doesn’t so much “suggest” sexual tension as she loads it into a cannon and fires it across the desert, but then shrugs and walks away before anything lands.
Let’s be clear: Beau Travail is not about war. It’s not about action. It’s not even about character, really. It’s about bodies. Sweaty, bronzed, ripped bodies doing synchronized calisthenics under the unforgiving African sun like they’re auditioning for a military-themed cologne commercial. There’s a lot of marching. A lot of slow-motion. A lot of oil-slicked torsos wrestling under moonlight while ambient synths hum mournfully in the background.
The dialogue? Sparse. The plot? Microscopic. The tension? All internal, which is a polite way of saying “nothing actually happens.” Denis spends most of the runtime making you watch men climb ropes, lift weights, and stare at each other in wordless longing while Galoup looks on with the twitchy energy of someone who hasn’t blinked since 1984.
Narration from future-Galoup fills in some of the gaps, but it mostly sounds like a depressed philosopher stuck in a sauna. He talks about honor, discipline, and solitude with all the enthusiasm of a man reading Nietzsche on Ambien. It’s supposed to be meditative. Instead, it’s like listening to a voicemail from a poet who accidentally joined CrossFit.
Sentain, the object of obsession, barely speaks. He’s a symbol, not a character. A Ken doll with cheekbones and better posture. He walks, he helps, he does the right thing—like a ghost haunting Galoup’s fragile sense of order. When Sentain shows empathy toward a fellow Legionnaire, Galoup loses his mind like someone just peed in his protein shake. He arranges for Sentain to get lost in the desert, which is about as dramatic as this film ever gets. Even then, Denis shoots it like a daydream fading into sand—no climax, no confrontation, just a long tracking shot of abandonment.
The entire emotional arc hinges on Galoup’s jealousy and repression. Is it romantic? Is it just military obsession? Is it deeply buried self-loathing? Denis isn’t telling. She’s too busy filming the wind. Or a lone tank. Or Galoup sleeping in crisp white sheets, tormented by dreams of logic and leg day.
Let’s talk about the pacing. Beau Travail moves with the urgency of a slow exhale. It’s a film that dares you to blink, lest you miss the moment where one man gazes at another for slightly longer than necessary. There are entire scenes where the camera just sits—staring at a hallway, a field, a stretch of desert—as if the scenery might confess something. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
Now, if you’re the kind of person who finds beauty in visual poetry, this movie might work for you. The cinematography is admittedly stunning—tight close-ups, harsh sun, the contrast between rigid choreography and emotional chaos. It’s like watching a perfume ad directed by a monk with unresolved trauma. But beauty without substance is just aesthetic purgatory. And Beau Travail feels like a film made by someone who ripped the pages out of a screenplay and replaced them with shirtless staring contests.
And then—just when you think you’ve endured all the sun-drenched emotional repression a film can offer—it hits you with the infamous final scene: Galoup, alone in a nightclub, dancing. Not just dancing—thrashing, twirling, breakdancing like a man possessed by the ghost of an ’80s workout video. It’s weird. It’s jarring. It’s the first time in the entire movie that anyone expresses anything with their body that isn’t a push-up. And it comes out of nowhere, like a fever dream sent by David Byrne and choreographed by your dad after three glasses of wine.
Is it liberation? A breakdown? A symbolic rebirth? Who knows. Who cares. By then, your soul has already withered from watching too many scenes of sad Frenchmen doing leg lifts in silence. The ending is just icing on the beige cake—fascinating in theory, baffling in practice.
Final Verdict?
Beau Travail is a film that critics love to call “lyrical,” “elegiac,” and “hypnotic.” What they mean is: nothing happens, but it looks really good while not happening. It’s a movie where men ache in silence, sweat in slow motion, and repress their emotions so hard it might qualify as a sport. Watch it if you enjoy interpretive dance as a substitute for storytelling, or if you’ve ever wished Full Metal Jacket had more ballet and less war. Everyone else? Skip the sun, skip the squats, and leave Galoup to his sad little dance floor. Life is short. Your gym membership already hurts enough.
