Pink Cinema - Saint Laurant film review

REVIEW Saint Laurent: Cobras and Caviar - YSL’s Fight for Elegance By David R Walker Director: Bertrand Bonello Cast: Gaspard Ulliel, Lea Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Helmut Berger, Jeremie Renier, Brady Corbet, Aymeline Valade, Amira Casar Director Bertand Bonello’s epic portrait of the life of influential fashion Designer Yves Saint Laurent is beautifully if not explicitly captured in his amazing biopic Saint Laurent, starring the gorgeous Gaspard Ulliel as the iconic and tortured designer. Belgian actor Jeremie Renier (In Bruges) stars as the French industrialist Pierre Berge whom together with Saint Laurent founded the hugely successful and influential Parisian Fashion House Yves Saint Laurent YSL, making it an international, synonymous with style and sophistication. Whilst Bonello’s Saint Laurent is not as brilliantly done as Olivier Dahan’s Oscar winning La Vie en Rose about the life of Edith Piaf, but just as lush and gorgeous making the entire film a tribute to Proust, the French homosexual novelist and celebrated aesthete who heavily influenced the extraordinarily talented designer YSL. Choosing not to show YSL from his early years in Algeria or his time briefly spent in the French army, but rather focusing on the crucial years of his artistic flourishing between 1967 and 1976, where together with Berge he transformed women’s fashion and the two of them whilst being lovers also were integral in establishing a hugely profitable international fashion label. The establishment of their tumultuous love affair is quite literally portrayed when YSL is asked to step stark naked out of a closet and fall into the strong arms of Pierre, his protector. The explicit nature of this sexual encounter highlights YSL’s overt sexuality and definitive queerness at a time when the Western World was first becoming acquainted with overt homosexuality especially post Stonewall in the early 1970’s. Industrialist Pierre Berge was the business brains behind the venture while YSL was clearly the creative force whose own inner demons led him into a debauched life of drugs, orgies and extravagant co- dependency. Yves Saint Laurent’s subsequent love affair with the notoriously promiscuous Jacques de Bascher who embraced the 1970’s sexual revolution in all forms from cottaging in the Tuileries Gardens and the toilets of the Gard du Nord to the notorious drug-fuelled sex orgies complete with a hoist and a collection of elaborately designed cock rings. Together, YSL and Bascher were frequently seen at famous Parisian nightclubs and indulged in a decadent relationship which was eventually doomed to failure, as YSL’s drug and alcohol excesses were threatening his distinctive creativity. Jacques the epitome of a gay 1970’s dilettante, wonderfully played by Louis Garrel seen in the provocative sexually explicit Bernardo Bertolucci film The Dreamers is perfectly cast in this role. Seductive, dangerous and certainly a bad influence, Garrel portrays Jacques as a male version of a femme fatale and unfortunately plays to every negative stereotype that Gay Men have been cast with, from promiscuity, to recklessness and drug abuse. Berge intervenes and rescues YSL from this dangerous courtship and soon re-establishes their dominance in haute couture in 1970’s Paris. Clearly influenced by Martin Scorsese, Bonello’s two and a half hour Saint Laurent is a drug fuelled, sexual and gorgeous portrayal of one of the 20^th century’s most famous fashion designers who subverted traditional gender roles with the introduction of the feminine two piece pant suit complete with fabulous accessories and sparkling cobra shaped belts. Saint Laurent was also famous for feeding his dogs caviar. Yves Saint Laurent own obsession with early 20th century novelist Marcel Proust and his tremendous love of the aesthetic is defined as the continuing fight for elegance. Proust was famous for writing Rembrance of Things Past which was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927 and also for openly depicting homosexuality in French literature. Bonello’s chooses to frame Saint Laurent in his later years in the late eighties as he leads a reclusive life in Paris, pining for his lost lover Jacques Bascher in between splicing shots of the rapturous 1976 Haute Couture Fashion Show at the Paris Atelier which YSL become so internationally famous for. Saint Laurent is a fabulous film, beautifully portrayed by all in the cast including upcoming actress Lea Seydoux (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Midnight in Paris) as Loulou and the gorgeous indie actor Brady Corbet (Mysterious Skin) as the American representative for YSL. Capturing the fragility and creativity of YSL, Gaspard Ulliel by his looks and personal endowment alone carries the role for the entire two and a half hour film but audiences should be warned that besides the subtitles, many of the overtly homosexual scenes may be disturbing to the uninformed. As biopics go, Saint Laurent is not a perfect film, slightly indulgent, beautifully shot and at times like watching Tom Ford’s A Single Man on an extended acid trip. Best line in the film is “You can’t name a perfume Opium” whilst the best scene in the film has to be Gaspard Ulliel stepping out of the closet in all his glory. Trust the French to be scandalous. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Saint_Laurent_(designer)

Edition 006 - May 2015

Pic: publicity still