Beau Travail

Galoup, a sergeant-major in the foreign legion, now dishonoured and living in Marseilles, recalls his sunnier days training recruits in a colonial outpost. An elliptical examination of how repression can lead to violence, of how codes of masculinity operate in an all-male society, of how resentment, jealousy and homoerotic tension can flourish in such a society – all told as dreamy flashback, a reverie of Galoup’s if you will. Each stunning image expresses those desires that Galoup cannot name, cannot admit to himself… but wait for the jaw-dropper of a final scene.– Dennis Sabourin