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506 La Travestie
Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2026 8:15 am
by MichaelB
LA TRAVESTIE
(Yves Boisset, 1988, 109 mins)
Release date: 20 July 2026
Limited Edition Blu-ray (UK and US premiere)
Pre-order the
UK or
US release.
A stark departure from his other works, Yves Boisset’s
La Travestie is a tactically abrasive look at patriarchy and identity. Lawyer Nicole (Zabou Breitman,
La Crise) is driven by frustration and male hypocrisy in both her personal and professional lives to leave her law firm and her hometown, and to reinvent herself as a man.
Arriving in Paris, Nicole makes friends, and soon those friends turn to lovers, and lovers turn to enemies. She suffocates in the identities she creates and lets rejection make a villain of her, until insecurities turn to tragedy and she has nowhere to turn.
Centring on female psychosexuality, without demonisation, the film presents challenging gender dynamics and trans imagery at a time when neither was common within mainstream cinema. It also utilises genre tropes to complex ends, never losing sight that it is, first and foremost, a character study with much to say about the plight of women in contemporary France in the late 1980s.
INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
• 4K restoration from the original negative
• Original mono audio
•
Girls and Boys Come Out to Play (2026): video essay by film critic and historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas exploring the film’s themes of gender and power
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials
• Script gallery: complete dialogue and continuity script
• New and improved English translation subtitles
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Georgia Humphreys, excerpts from the film’s press kit, an overview of critical responses, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 4,000 copies for the UK and US
• More to be announced
• All features subject to change
#PHILE506B
BBFC cert: 18 TBC
REGION A+B
EAN: 5060697925456
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2026 12:10 pm
by domino harvey
Man, within a year there’s been like half a dozen Boisset films in English friendly editions despite no real name recognition in English territories. But Deville, that’s going too far... Interesting to see La Crise credited for Zabou (you’d think they’d pick Cuisine et Dependances or Le Premier Jour… for English audiences, as I don’t think that one ever had an English friendly home video release in US/UK), wonder if that one’s in the hopper
EDIT Looking up her filmography and the comedy from this year with a bald Laurent Lafitte looks incredible!
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Mon May 11, 2026 3:40 pm
by knives
And she’s even in a Deville film!
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Tue May 12, 2026 1:48 am
by Murdoch
This sounds very intriguing. I haven't seen anything by Boisset before but I'm tempted to blind buy from the description. Anyone have any input on the film?
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2026 12:14 pm
by MichaelB
Final specs:
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2026 6:49 pm
by GaryC
There's also an advisory on the cover slip (not the disc itself) regarding a sequence of flashing lights which might adversely affect someone with photosensitive epilepsy.
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2026 8:55 pm
by tenia
MichaelB wrote:Final specs:
I believe it's Midi Auvergne, and not Midi Auverge !
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2026 3:27 am
by Murdoch
Murdoch wrote: Tue May 12, 2026 1:48 am
This sounds very intriguing. I haven't seen anything by Boisset before but I'm tempted to blind buy from the description. Anyone have any input on the film?
I just watched it and wow. After suffering through two of Boisset's thrillers from the Kino set (a very bad revenge movie and then a forgettable child kidnapping story), I approached this with hesitant interest, but was floored by it. A lonely chameleon, genderless and violent, moves through the world, stealing identities and love. Insatiable, irritable, they discard lovers with reckless abandon as they hurtle into oblivion. Describing the plot would only detract from the experience, as it feels like a human tailspin caught on film, a person moving further and further away from their identity until nothing is left. Zabou's movement between man and woman feels part and parcel with the character the further along the film progresses, rather than the gimmick I feared it would be, as each transition comes to feel like a form of escape, taking on a new persona to obliterate the prior one. Yet Nicole, Nick, Solange, Christine... suffer from a central loneliness that anchors the film instead of letting it spin around untethered, and that's what makes the final moments particularly unnerving. Highly recommended, very much worth picking up.
Re: 506 La Travestie
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2026 4:09 am
by Murdoch
I made my way through the two main supplements of this release (unsurprising to see so little material on the film given its obscurity)
As may be the best example of Boisset just stumbling into making a great film, in the news report of the film's shooting, he says he was fascinated by the concept of madness and someone "as normal as you and me" descending into it, which made me wonder if he even knew what he was shooting at that point as I don't think Zabou's character, who begins the film by manipulating her lovers for money, could ever be construed as "normal" (or maybe Boisset just runs with a wild crowd!). He also likens the film to his Bleu comme l'enfer, which I have not seen but an 80s Lambert Wilson action thriller seems a far distance from this.
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas's observations were a nice modern analysis, which was desperately needed given the nature of the film and its lack of availability, and I would have loved to hear her opinions extended to a full commentary.
This film has made me very curious to seek out the work of author Alain Roger, who wrote the source material, but it appears his work is as difficult to find as this film before this release!