Beau travail
With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Agnès Godard and approved by director Claire Denis, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- New conversation between Denis and filmmaker Barry Jenkins
- New selected-scene commentary with Godard
- New interviews with actors Denis Lavant and Grégoire Colin
- New video essay by film scholar Judith Mayne
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Girish Shambu
New cover by Michael Boland
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Agnès Godard and approved by director Claire Denis, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- New conversation between Denis and filmmaker Barry Jenkins
- New selected-scene commentary with Godard
- New interviews with actors Denis Lavant and Grégoire Colin
- New video essay by film scholar Judith Mayne
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Girish Shambu
New cover by Michael Boland
Cast
- Denis Lavant
- Galoup
- Michel Subor
- Commandant Bruno Forestier
- Grégoire Colin
- Gilles Sentain
- Richard Courcet
- Legionnaire
- Nicolas Duvauchelle
- Legionnaire
- Marta Tafesse Kassa
- Rahel
Credits
- Director
- Claire Denis
- Produced by
- Jérôme Minet
- Produced by
- Patrick Grandperret
- Screenplay by
- Jean-Pol Fargeau
- Screenplay by
- Claire Denis
- Adapted from “Billy Budd, Sailor,” by
- Herman Melville
- Cinematography by
- Agnès Godard
- Film editing by
- Nelly Quettier
- Choreography by
- Bernardo Montet
- Sound recording by
- Jean-Paul Mugel
- Sound recording by
- Dominique Gaborieau
- Sound editing by
- Christophe Winding
- Original music by
- Eran Tzur
- Set design by
- Arnaud de Moleron
- Costumes by
- Judy Shrewsbury
A scene from Beau Travail
