Denis Lavant dances

Denis Lavant has one of the best senses of movement of any contemporary actor I can think of.

From 1986's Mauvais Sang, we have a fantastic travelling shot set to David Bowie's "Modern Love" (starts around 1:30). The film is Lavant's second collaboration with his longtime acolyte, the director maudit Leos Carax.



Here is Lavant at the end of Claire Denis's Beau Travail, her somptuous 1999 adaptation of Billy Budd:



This third sample was shot just a few months ago. It's a kind of postscript to Carax's latest, a short film included in an omnibus titled Tokyo! (The other two segments are by Michel Gondry and Joon-ho Bong.) Lavant plays a cryptic enigma simply called Merde, who talks in an invented language called Merdogon, which sounds a bit like Magma's Kobaïan. I read somewhere the video below was shot in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris.