Tag Archives: Janus Films

WONG KAR WAI — HAPPY TOGETHER

Leave a reply

During a fire accident in 2019, we lost some of the original negative of HAPPY TOGETHER. In the ensuing months, we tried to restore the negative as much as we could, but a portion of it had been permanently damaged. We lost not only some of the picture, but also the sound in those reels. As a result, I had to shorten some of Tony’s monologues, but with the amazing work of L’Immagine Ritrovata, we managed to restore most of the scenes to better quality. — Wong Kar Wai

As part of the series World of Wong Kar Wai, Film at Lincoln Center presents a new 4K digital restoration—supervised by the director—of HAPPY TOGETHER, Wong’s “feverish portrait of the life cycle of a love affair that’s by turns devastating and delirious… capturing the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, when the country’s LGBTQ community suddenly faced an uncertain future.”*

Starring Leslie Cheung and Tong Leung—and shot by Christopher Doyle—this 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata, Jet Tone, and One Cool. See link below for details.

HAPPY TOGETHER

Film at Lincoln Center Virtual Cinema

Janus Films

Now streaming.

Above, from top: Wong Kar Wai, Happy Together (1995) Leslie Cheung (left) and Tong Leung; Leung (left) and Cheung; Cheung (left) and Leung; Happy Together poster, courtesy and © Jet Tone; Leung (left) and Cheung; Cheung and Leung. Images courtesy and © Wong Kar Wai, Jet Tone, and Janus Films.

Below: Leung (left) and Cheung from Christopher Doyle, Buenos Aires (1997), the cinematographer’s photo book published in Japan documenting the filming of Happy Together.

CLAIRE DENIS — BEAU TRAVAIL RESTORED

Leave a reply

BEAU TRAVAIL was a very small budget and very few days of shooting, it was a completely free experience. Also free because the French army that was really training in Djibouti was opposed to the fact that we were doing the movie, and therefore we had to keep in mind that the script should be able to change day by day in case they stopped the movie. I always told my producer that I was ready to finish shooting in hotel rooms, in case they would stop us from going outside. So we did rehearse in Paris. We rehearsed a long time. We knew everything we wanted to do, and then in Djibouti it was like free jazz, you know? It was like being free and every day we could shoot. — Claire Denis

With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s novella, 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.

The 4K restoration of Denis’ masterpiece—supervised by the cinematographer—is now streaming via Janus Films. See link below for details.

BEAU TRAVAIL

Now playing.

Laemmle, Los Angeles

Claire Denis, Beau Travail (1999), from top: Grégoire Colin; Beau Travail (4); Denis Lavant; Nicolas Duvauchelle (second from right) and Colin (left); Beau Travail. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, the photographers, and Janus Films.