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Description
Beau Travail (1998) is Claire Denis' bold, sensuous masterpiece. Loosely based on Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor (1924), the film explores the complexities of desire, identity, and power within an all-male group of French Foreign Legionnaires stationed at a coastal outpost in the former colony of Djibouti, in East Africa.
The film cemented Denis' position as a leading auteur and visual poet. In this book, Corinn Columpar positions the film as a cinematic bid for freedom. She examines its formal innovations - particularly the use of the gaze, voice, and movement - to explain how Denis produces exhilarating possibilities narratively, affectively, and ideologically, while also situating the film within the histories of art cinema and postcolonial filmmaking.
Table of Contents
1. Pretexts: The Freedom to Associate Ideas
2. Encounters: The Freedom to Choose Your Side
3. Collaborations: The Freedom to Experiment
Notes
Credits
Product details
| Published | 23 Jul 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 96 |
| ISBN | 9781839027130 |
| Imprint | British Film Institute |
| Illustrations | 60 colour illus |
| Dimensions | 190 x 135 mm |
| Series | BFI Film Classics |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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