Saint Laurent

It is rather unusual that two French biographic films about the prêt-à-porter fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) both came out in the same calendar year, YVES SAINT LAURENT opened in January 2014, directed by actor-turns-director Jalil Lespert, stars a rather unknown Pierre Niney as our protagonist and Guillaume Gallienne (the triple threat of 2014 CÉSAR AWARDS winner ME, MYSELF AND MUM 2013, 7/10) as his business partner and life companion Pierre Bergé. While Bertrand Bonello's more ambitious and high-profile SAINT LAURENT debuted in Cannes last year, with Gaspard Ulliel and Jérémie Renier take the central roles as Yves and Pierre.

They are on a collision course in this year's CÉSAR AWARDS, SL leads with 10 nominations including BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR, and YSL has 7 nominations all in acting and technique branches, eventually SL ends up with a sole win for BEST COSTUME DESIGN and Niney trounces Ulliel for the much coveted BEST LEADING ACTOR honor (good-looking is also a stumbling block in winning recognitions from your peers, and it is a double-standard between male and female). The latter must have a strong heart to accept defeat to an peer actor who plays the same character in another movie, one sure thing is that he doesn't invest less for the role than Niney, and in my book, Ulliel overshadows Niney in emulating Yves' unique utterance and detailed mannerism, this could really hurt one's confidence and ego in this throat-cutting showbiz.

The time-lines are overlapping, YSL is a less flamboyant and a more narrative-centered piece starts from the beginning of Yves' career, whereas SL mainly focuses on a decade from 1967 to 1976, the acme of his career, although it runs a 150-minutes compared with the former's moderate 106 minutes, with whimsical jumps of his childhood and senile stage (played by Helmut Berger).

Basically YSL is presented as a recollection from Mr. Berge's perspective, so the large chunk of Yves' activities are under the stern observation of Pierre, who is a loyal watchdog of Yves' company and his private life. Niney embodies Yves with a disarming timidity, his disproportionally big nose against his sylphlike physique gives an impression of self- consciousness and he is wanting the confidence with which Saint Laurent should naturalistic-ally equip being a peacocking narcissist. Charlotte Le Bon plays Victoria Doutreleau, Yves' muse in his early career, and their following falling-out is a fascinating scoop which fails to be capitalized on (this part is entirely omitted in SL due to the time frame), so is the much hyped love affair between Yves and Jacques de Bascher (Lafitte), which is being treated like a cliché affair with broad brush. For the worse, Gallienne is another case of miscast, his superlative comedic bent has no room to exhibit, yet the film spends too much time on him - a more rigid and less interesting character loitering as an omnipresent voyeur spying on Yves, to an effect of slight annoyance, he doesn't possess an eye-grabbing charm to be a supporting scene-stealer, this is a compromise when you let the still-alive Pierre Bergé champion your film, he wants more spotlight and in reality, rarely one can do that from Yves Saint Laurent.

Thus to say SL has more liberty in his character building, Yves is the one-and-the-only protagonist, everyone around him are bells-and-whistles, Renier's Bergé is barely given any chewy scenes to perform and as stylish as Seydoux's Loulou de la Falaise and Valade's Betty Catroux (whose only chance to stun the audience is in her introduction oner, the killing charm of a supermodel), Bonello scarcely offers them lines to utter, they are perfect ornaments around Yves, and reflects his aesthetics and discernment. More as a recount of Yves' emotional flow than an orthodox chronicle, Bonello dares to throw the narrative into disarray with symbolic projections (buddha, snakes and mirrors) and overlong takes to set the atmosphere arousing, risks losing the correlations among characters in order to concoct a sumptuous feast of haute couture in its most paradigm-shifting moments (frankly speaking YSL is too shabby and drab by comparison) and a dysfunctional psyche of a trend-setter who owns-it-all and still cannot find satisfaction inside albeit all the extravagance he is endowed and channels. It is a flawed film no doubt, the last half-hour is too erratic to concentrate, but one should appreciate the intention at the first place, plus Gaspard Ulliel brings about his boldest performance ever, not to mention the nudity out of the closet bravura, if only the story would be edited and collaged in a more sequential manner, he excellent radiates with vulnerability, condescendence, bewilderment, allurement and pride which all can be conducted to a person at the position where Yves Saint Laurent is.

Louis Garrel's Jacques is permitted with more exploration into his perverse sexual activity and Garrel maximally magnifies his enigmatic attraction with nonchalant superciliousness, explains well why he can be the inamorato of both Yves and Karl Lagerfeld, a spoiled product of that period. Also in SL, Bonello's classic music background has been put into good use to also gratify viewer's pretentious ears. Anyhow, the two films have their own merits and shortcomings, for an artistic cinephile, the appeal of SAINT LAURENT is a too big enticement, and if you prefer a healing love story between two men, which actually happened in real life, YVES SAINT LAURENT may be more promising for that!

This film tells the story of the lost and hedonistic lifestyle of the young fashion genius Yves Saint Laurent, and his life in the later years.

The film starts off interesting, as it starts the story from Yves already having success in the fashion world. While there's some mention of his work, the emphasis of the plot is on Yves' partying, drugs and alcohol. The very handsome actor playing Saint Laurent helps to keep viewers interested, but unfortunately the interest is not sustained because I find the last hour of the film disjointed, unfocused and frankly aimless. The film cuts from his youth to his older days continuously for no good reason, and scenes are not connected to tell a cohesive story. Subplots are poorly explained and not followed through. For example, we don't know what the outcome is after the long first business meeting with the Americans. Then, the brief coverage of "opium" isn't followed up. What Pierre says to Jacques is an annoying mystery as well. Then the film cuts from the fashion show to various stages of his life in a random manner, that I became completely confused. I was waiting for the film to end, but it just wouldn't end. I was disappointed by this film.

Looked forward to this version of the YSL saga. Was disappointed in the first, Yves Saint Laurent, so had high hopes for this one which was favorably reviewed. One wonders what film the NYT reviewer had watched? This mess is not properly a film, at best it is an indulgent impressionist biography. There is no narrative, no story-line, no characters (let alone character development). I doubt that without some knowledge of YSL's life one could follow the film. I even doubt that one would be interested in doing so. The actors are first class but given their abilities they are as wasted as was my time being bored for the 150 minutes of creeping, not running, time of Saint Laurent.

YSL was an artsy mess, so I suppose it's fitting that this film is as well. It looks gorgeous and has a great time rubbernecking Yves's hedonistic ways, but it's also pretty mean-spirited. It doesn't attempt to understand Yves or what drove him or his creative process. He's just a rich, spoiled jerk in this film.

Also, I enjoy a good nonlinear art film, but they are hard to pull off. This film is very hard to follow if you don't already know YSL's biography and work, and there are many long, pointless scenes that are supposed to be symbolic but don't really add up to much. It does have some fantastic performances and great set pieces, and if you like reveling in 1970s hedonism, you'll enjoy it on that level.

Sometimes formulas and conventions are a good thing. The rival film to this one Yves St. Laurent may be far more conventional, but it is at least coherent and has genuine empathy for Yves and Pierre. Plus, it features the actual clothes Yves's designed.

If you're a student of fashion, it's fun to compare the two films, but I think the more conventional one wins the day simply for being a more pleasant experience to watch.

If you want to drown in a sea of poseurs and take two and one half hours to do it, then this flick is just your perfect rusty old skiff.

Honestly two and one half hours of poseurs, poseurs, poseurs, poseurs. Poseurs smoking, smoking, smoking! Poseurs drinking, drinking, drinking. Poseurs on drugs, dope, drugs, dope, etc. Poseurs in elegant surroundings, fancy over decorated rooms. Poseurs in clothes that look like they were heisted from a mob bosses closet.

Poseurs whispering, whispering, whispering! There is dialog in this flick but the entire cast seemed reluctant to actually speak it in a normal vocal tone. More poseurs, male, female. Party poseurs! Parties in very artsy settings. More lavish rooms for this cast of poseurs to be photographed in. And somewhere squeezed into this sea of monotonous poseurs is a story, an actual plot line. But you will drown long before you become aware of it!