“Serve the good cause and die”: this is the injunction that we discover anchored on the skin of General Galoup, former chief adjutant of the Foreign Legion. A mantra that resonates with the title of the film, BEAUTIFUL WORK, and thus encapsulates the manifest emptiness of the daily life of the legionnaires, a subject placed at the heart of Claire Denis’ feature film.
The director, whose filmography has never ceased to probe the themes of racial tensions in the colonial world (Chocolat) than that of the relationship to the body (Who cares about Death), was here freely inspired by a short story by Herman Melville, Billy Budd, marin. If the author recounted the fascination of a captain of the British fleet for a young sailor, Denis transposes this story under the overwhelming sun of Djibouti. The Foreign Legion, both because of the strangeness of the “man’s world” that it embodies and for its foreignness vis-à-vis the local populations, appears to the director as an ideal framework for her exploration of the complex dynamics of masculinity and desire.
“Galloup, it’s me” ; It is thus to the sound of a voice-over that we are introduced to the general’s story, interpreted by Denis Lavant. His words weave the link between the two temporalities which appear in GOOD WORK ; the narration is not classic, but double. It takes place partly in Marseille, where Galoup reads extracts from his diary and retraces the events leading to his repatriation. Then, the words becoming images, a second narrative sphere restores on screen these memories at the heart of the Foreign Legion. More particularly, Galoup identifies the beginning of his “end” at the moment of the arrival of a new recruit, Sentain (Gregoire Colin). The beauty and serenity of this young legionnaire arouse the jealousy of Galoup, undermined by his obsession with obtaining recognition from his superior. Indeed, he has an almost unhealthy respect and affection for Commander Forestier (Michel Subor), and cannot bear to see his attention directed towards Sentain, who “seduces people and attracts attention”. Gradually, Galoup’s obsessive jealousy becomes murderous, to the point that he perfects his trap and ends up assigning Sentain to a forced march into the desert, from which he will not be able to return.
Beyond its plot, the brilliance of GOOD WORK relies on the talent of Claire Denis to embody on screen the complex dynamics underlying Galoup’s feelings. Sometimes threatening, sometimes an object of desire, the appearances of Sentain’s muscular body and youthful face appear to be more revealing of Galoup’s attraction than the sporadic words that he tries to place on his experience. While he can only describe his fascination as “something vague”it is the bodies that allow Denis to reveal the attraction-repulsion that the adjutant experiences, and whose homoeroticism culminates during a close-up duel scene, facing the sea. “I missed everything, from a certain point of view, and a lot of things depend on the point of view”. In fact, if GOOD WORK is a fascinating cinematographic object, it is precisely because it invites us to see as we never see, to re-examine this universe of excessively standardized masculinity. Denis films the disintegration of the well-oiled machinery of the Foreign Legion by inducing disorder and desire, beyond just the character of Sentain. In fact, most of the feature film focuses on the military training to which the legionnaires dedicate themselves; the bodies, mute, run, jump, climb, crawl. Through radical choices of staging, what could have been a form of warlike exaltation turns into a true choreographic ballet, Forestier being not only a corps commander but also a leader of the corps.
By surrounding yourself with the choreographer Bernardo Montetfrom the photographer Agnes Godard and by superimposing musical extracts from the Billy Budd Benjamin Britten Denis makes military maneuvers the place where multiple individuals, restricted by uniform and discipline, attempt to persist. The gestures are repeated, synchronized, but the looks, muscles and cries betray the bodies’ desire for expression. Their vitality seems crushed by the rigid framework of the Legion, a framework that is both explicit since it is delimited by numerous fences and implicit, expressed through the normativity of a masculinity extinguishing any expression of desire. Prisoners of this rigidity, these desirable bodies are, like that of Galoup, rendered “unfit for life, unfit for civil service”. By confronting them with the intrigued looks of local populations, Denis underlines the absurdity of the presence of the Legion and the uselessness of the military routine to which it tirelessly subjects its soldiers. In fact, the maneuvers take place in deserted places where the so-called external threat never arises, giving rise to an almost paranoid unease (a situation also explored in the postcolonial context of the most recent Pacifictiond’Albert Serra). In fact, it is ultimately the simulacrum of war that this military body fears which ends up causing the death of one of its members. In this sense, the Foreign Legion is above all strange, because the nervous wait in which it imprisons these young bodies is ultimately only a perdition, a ” good work “ ultimately vain. Galoup is one of those to whom discipline has forbidden all enjoyment, so much so that after being expunged, he no longer seems to be able to detach himself from his body-machine and can only “think of the end, of my end”. Inert, revolver in hand, the suicide trail seems clearly indicated to us by Denis. This is until, in what was a frozen picture, his camera focuses on a vein on Galoup’s arm, whose pulsation aligns with the sound of the first notes of Rythm of the Night. Confounding all our expectations, Denis then offers his character a possibility of redemption, which we do not really know if it is a reminiscence, a dream or a glimpse of the future.
As prescribed by her character, the director changes “angle of attack”, and Galoup finally takes shape before our eyes. The forced march and martial stiffness suddenly give way to a phlegmatic attitude; cigarette in hand, Galoup is leaning in front of a nightclub. He is no longer behind but in front of the gates, and in a crescendo, he lets himself go until reaching completely spectacular flashes. Only one Denis Lavantwhose dazzling physical performance in the Bad blood of Leos Carax has left its mark on memories, is capable of bodily embodying the symbolic force of such a scene. Indeed, Claire Denis succeeds brilliantly in signifying the interiority of his character through corporeality, in a moment of suspension truly outside of time. As Martha Graham wrote, dance is the “hidden language of the soul”, and is here precisely the means for Galoup to transcend the incommunicability of his emotions. The impulse for life that seizes him takes him to meet himself, after so many years torn away by the institution. He declares : “Perhaps with remorse begins freedom” and then, headlong, he dances.
Esther VASSEUR
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2024-01-25 09:22:15
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