NYFF: Saint Laurent is Über-Stylish but...
Tuesday, September 30, 2014 at 7:21PM 
Our NYFF coverage continues with Nathaniel on France's Oscar submission Saint Laurent.
If you're going to make a biopic of one of the great fashion designers, it better damn well be stylish. Saint Laurent one of two new biopics tackling the iconic French designer Yves Saint Laurent assures you of its gifts in this area almost immediately. There's nary a frame, at least for the first two thirds of the film, that you couldn't frame and admire for aesthetic reasons: rich decadent colors, gorgeous actors as gorgeous people, carefully composed shots in elaborately decorated homes, dark exclusive clubs, and interiors of stores that that are so beautiful in their rigidity that they look more like institutional museums after hours, free of consumers but full of art. Even the daring full frontal nudity is stylish, whether it's employed for confrontational queer desire or for humor as in a memorable sequence late in the picture between a clothed woman and naked one. The scene plays like unintentional comedy for a moment until you discern that it's actual comedy, a meta joke about overdetermined STYLE and the fashion world's self mythologizing nature within a movie positively dripping with style and self-mythologizing.
The director Bertrand Bonello (House of Tolerance, The Pornographer) has chosen the right form for his movie -- at least in part, telling the story visually first and foremost, and lushly and creatively at that. Would that I had a photographic memory to recount the many fine choices but there are three that stuck with me, all from the first and second acts...
dangerous gay players & beautiful dress-up muses after the jump...
Gaspard Ulliel and Lea Seydoux as besties Yves & LouLou in "Saint Laurent"
(When I say "acts" I'm speaking of rough thirds of the actual running time -- the movie is 2½ hours and has no clear delineations, unfortunately hopping around in time as the mood strikes. That's an epidemic at the cinema and on television for well over a decade now despite regularly contributing nothing at all to the understanding or resonance of the narrative. This sprawling bio covers Yves Saint Laurent's entire life in mosaic fashion but concentrates mostly on a decade's span from the mid 60s through the mid 70s when the designer was at the peak of his fame, physical beauty, and creative powers.)
Two of those memorable sequences mentioned are actually twins with Saint Laurent picking up a woman and a man at his favorite disco. In the first of these early in the movie he spots a ravishing blonde model named Betty (Amelyne Valade) directly across the club. The editing slyly intersperses shots of Yves in her place, and plays with the costuming to insure that we've fused the artist to his new muse instantly and understand the nature of their relationship before they do which gives the scene a playful inevitably. They drift, dancing, toward each other and when they're finally speaking they're like old friends, childishly bantering about whether or not she will leave her surely lucrative gig with a rival designer to be the face of his line. 'I won't. You will. I won't.' and so forth. She will and does and they remain inseparable though later a new different kind of muse enters (Lea Seydoux as "LouLou") who joins his fashion team. A second scene much later in the picture, places Yves in the same seated club position, only across the way this time is a ravishing brunette named Jacques (Louis Garrell, looking more suave and dangerously carnal than he ever has).
Louis Garrell is a seductive gigolo in "Saint Laurent"
This time we don't get cuts back and forth but the camera tracking their line of vision back and forth like a tennis match to catch each other. Yves does not identify but remains seated and Jacques drifts toward him like a bemused predator. The increased camera attention lavished on Jacques,who ends the scene with suggestive hand to mouth gestures, conveys all you need to know about Yves' instant and debilitating attraction. They will leave together and remain inseparable for a time, much to the horror of Yves' business partner and longtime love Pierre (Jeremie Renier)
The third sticky shot is a curious but great montage when a split screen appears to place tumultous world events on the left with a never ending succession of new lines from YSL on the right as the years and seasons fly by. It's a positively genius but also highly ambiguous move which both convey's Saint Laurent's sealed off decadent world and justifies all his bitching about endless work, while also showing the importance of time and seasons and changing with them to fashion. But maybe it also throws a little shade towards its subject while its fawning on his creativity.
There is so much to admire and love about the movie - especially visually - that I only wish I could wholly endorse it. But, like many biopics before it, it is foolishly long. When your narrative is both repetitive by nature and über familiar (when will filmmakers stop finding rise to fame and fortune then defeat by drug addictions so endlessly fascinating as a story? We've seen it hundreds of times now!) it's best to keep things brisk and tight. The movie wastes at least twenty minutes on Yves as an old man (rather than old age makeup, they just ditch the handsome Gaspard Ulliel from his starring role, a pity since he's doing such a smashing job of it) and several scenes when Yves is young are repetitive. Early in the movie there's a great sequence about pattern work on muslin and a shopgirl breaking down crying because she "can't get the tension right". The shots of the construction are laborious but beautiful conveying so much about the complexities of fashion and the sanity-challenging aspects of couture perfectionism. When Yves sees the mock up dress he makes only a tiny adjustment until he impulsively rips off both sleeves and there, in its place, he sees the ideal dress, cooing over its perfection and simplicity. The filmmaking here is beautiful but it can't get the tension right. Would that it had only ripped off the fussiest elements (say, a half hour of footage and that scrambled timeline) and sent it out on to the glamorous film festival runway. That'd be an almost unbearably stylish movie about style rather than a stylish movie that risks being unbearable. B
Yves (Ulliel) with his cherished Buddha in "Saint Laurent"
Saint Laurent screens tonight Tuesday Sept 30th (8:30 PM) and Thursday Oct 7th (8:30 PM). Previous NYFF reviews here. It is France's Oscar contender this year. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in 2015 though it will surely be slapped with an NC-17 so expect a shorter cut in America (unfortunately not trimming the scenes that actually need trimming!) or for the movie to be released without a rating.
Reader Comments (11)
I do enjoy your writing. I"m looking forward to this one.
Nothing in the world would please me more than Lea Seydoux just becoming the NC-17 tooth fairy, leaving a trail of art and dick in her sexy wake.
I also adore Bonello's last film, the gorgeous (and it sounds like, more emotionally rewarding?) House Of Tolerance. It's on Netflix! Check it out.
Is this really that graphic that NC-17 is necessary? I am surprised by this.
Drew -- well there are three visible penises onscreen and considering the MPAA can rarely handle seeing even one, i think it's a safe assumption.
TB -- hahaha
I saw the other biopic, YSL, which seems like it might have been more straightforward in its telling. It had the benefit of using actual Saint Laurent garments, with the blessing of his estate. Quite lush overall, and anchored by a great lead performance. I wonder how they compare...
sanfran - i'd actually love to see it now to compare. I assume that this one wouldn't have gotten a blessing since it's relatively non-fawning detailing sex and drug addictions and whatnot.
I *loved* this film. LOVED IT. I was entirely swept up in its decadent glamour that I didn't even care it was repetitive in the middle section. Everything about it was fantastic and I even liked the third act conceit of using an older actor (HELMUT BERGER!) and allowing for the more conventional climax of the picture being his final days and tying it in with his creative climax, the fashion show.
I can't wait to see it only because I've read so much about Yves and Loulou and Betty. Loulou pops up a lot in the Andy Warhol Diaries... She was a trip!
Nathaniel -- the other YSL also provides sex and drugs revelations too. The difference might be that Pierre Berge comes off quite heroically, since he bankrolled the film as producer
Saw this last night - totally swoon worthy. One of the best style-as-substance movies I've seen in recent memory. Some of its biopic-itis definitely grates, but I mostly loved it, including the flash forwards with Helmut Berger, which I thought, intercut with the success of the '76 fashion show, nicely undercut the typical biopic "triumphant comeback" ending.