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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Beau Travail

Beau Travail

Paperback

Series: BFI Film Classics

Film Guides & ReferenceWomen's Studies

Publisher Price: $17.95

ISBN10: 1839027134
ISBN13: 9781839027130
Publisher: British Film Institute
Published: Jun 11 2026
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.36
Height: 0.24 Width: 5.43 Depth: 7.46
Language: English

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.

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Film Guides & Reference