Yves Saint Laurent

If you knew enough about Mr. Saint Laurent's life and already in love with his dazzling works on your way in, this film would satisfy you. Otherwise, you were left hanging out there, feeling that something's missing. This biopic did a good job in not overdramatizing the less-than-eventful life of this famous designer. We were allowed to observe the substantial life of Mr. Saint Laurent in a quiet but penetrating way. The actor actually brought back to life Mr. Saint Laurent. Through him, we feel the senses of fulfillment, deprivation, craving for stability or wilderness of love, and we acknowledge that Mr. Saint Laurent and his lifetime companion and business associate truly steered the Saint Laurent ship through the uncertainty of life and multi-faceted forms of human weakness. It shows us that artistic talents, while indispensable, must be supported by mental strength and determination, something Mr. Saint Laurent missed at times. Well, lust for money and financial success does help, I figure, but it is never the main element to real success. To me personally, Mr. Saint Laurent's life is not enough to make a great drama. A biopic, yes, but not a drama. If the script writer should decide to explore inner thinking of Mr. Saint Laurent behind a few of his designs, and the struggle and the inspiration he had during the process, we might be getting a drama in our hands. Another lacking element was the pressure of changing decades / era. The film simply moved us from this year to another, without real insertion on what all these time changes meant. They should have brought us new challenges, fears, uncertainty, and the other world around the fashion world. There was none of it. Judging from this film alone, Mr. Saint Laurent simply floated around this world, graced upon it, and simply left. Not enough.

I was recommended this movie by my sister who is, like many girls, really into fashion. For her Yves Saint-Laurent represents one of the great masters of fashion. A man that was born to make women look beautiful. Now that said, I really don't see anything in the movie a man who is not particularly into fashion could like about it. The story of YSL is boring at best. Not his actual life but the way he is portrayed. Falling into drugs at a pretty young age and not being able to ever keep it together during the majority of his life. He had a boyfriend/manager who is used as the person telling the story of the fashion legend. By the end of the movie, I don't know if you feel like you have find out loads of things about YSL that you didn't know, you are just left to wonder how his boyfriend put up with him for so long.

YVES SAINT-LAURENT traces the career of the eponymous fashion designer (Pierre Niney) from his early days in the late Fifties to the zenith of his fame two decades later. The film concentrates on his professional as well as his personal struggles with long-time lover (and manager) Pierre Bergé (Guillaume Gallienne).

Director Jalil Lespert makes a lot out of Saint-Laurent's background as an outsider; born in Algeria during the colonial period, he never really felt at home in mainstream Parisian society. He began his career by following existing fashion patterns; but after being dismissed as "boring," immediately after leaving the house of Dior (Patrice Thibaud) he branched out on his own. This proved a wise move, as the film shows how he shot to stardom with a series of daring and often innovatory designs. There are several shots of Saint-Laurent working on his new creations day and night, to the despair of Pierre.

YVES SAINT-LAURENT offers a sumptuous recreation of Fifties and Sixties Parisian society. Deliberately shot in washed-out colors, the film conjures up a lost world of large saloon cars, packed streets and never-ending parties where Saint-Laurent spent most of his leisure-time. The models' hairstyles are deliberately ostentatious, especially that of principal mannequin Victoire (Charlotte Le Bon) who at first attracts and then repels Saint- Laurent.

Lespert's film doesn't tell us much about Saint-Laurent's life, other than the fact that he was something of a tortured genius, always on the lookout for personal as well as professional satisfaction but never seeming to find it. He enjoys a close relationship with his mother (Marianne Basler), and later on in life he always runs back to Pierre for emotional as well as professional support. With his black horn-rimmed lenses and increasingly disheveled hair-styles, Niney gives a convincing portrayal of the designed. On the other hand, perhaps the script should have offered more insight into how Saint-Laurent became such an iconic figure of the fashion world; what was it about him that made him so popular with both high society and the ordinary consumer.

As Pierre, Galienne has to make the best of a supporting role, and succeeds brilliantly. He comes across as a patient person, ever ready to forgive Saint-Laurent's excesses; but nonetheless dedicated to the fledgling fashion-house's future success. In several backstage sequences he is shown managing the models, designers and other assorted hangers-on with quiet efficiency, clipboard in hand. It was mostly down to his efforts that the house of Saint-Laurent enjoyed its global success; without him, the designer might have only had limited appeal.

YVES SAINT-LAURENT is definitely watchable - some of the party- scenes where the hero enters a drug-filled world of fantasy and hallucination - are particularly memorably shot. But I still think the film represents something of a missed opportunity to dramatize the life of an icon.

The young up and coming executive of a fashion house who became an industry icon himself.

In this biopic, we are treated to a rather different angle of the legendary designer. We follow his early steps in the world of fashion and how his vision guided him and his unremittingly uncompromising personality made him a stand out. Like all 'celebrities' it was rather sad to see him fall into the alcohol and drugs trap but it was the love of someone else that kept him steady, possible saving from altogether destruction.

Being so open about his homosexuality in such puritanical times was also refreshing to see.

Overall, whilst it might not be a masterpiece of a movie, but still it has style, class and panache to make it a memorable experience even a fitting tribute to this great man of fashion.

I have just watched Yves Saint Laurent and found it to be a visually sumptuous film which totally captures the dying days of the elite formal couture houses before bursting into the hedonism of modern global fashion brands. An excellent companion piece to L'Amour Fou (2010), giving an insight into the tempestuous but private relationship between YSL and Pierre Bergé through the pitch perfect acting of Pierre Niney (Yves) and Guillaume Gallienne (Pierre).

The film charts YSL's career from his early years at Dior in the late 1950s through to his iconic Ballet Russes collection of 1976. The world of the late 1950s is perfectly captured with elegant Dior designs, stylish models and a jazz score that matched the chic Parisian apartments the characters inhabit.

In one such apartment Yves meets Pierre Bergé, the man he will spend the rest of his life with both privately and professionally. For Pierre is the man who orchestrates the creation of YSL as a couture house. He gives Yves the confidence to "create on my own terms" and show the world his own particular view of feminine beauty and elegance.

Their relationship mirrors Giancarlo Giammetti and Valentino Garavani who together also created an iconic fashion house and sustained a personal relationship for over 50 years. Their story too is wonderfully and humorously captured in the documentary The Last Emperor (2008). However, one is left with a sense that Giancarlo and Valentino had a much more stable relationship to that of Yves and Pierre. The YSL movie captures during the 1960/70s Yves' erratic excesses with drugs and sex and Pierre's jealousy and need for control.

But this expose of their difficult relationship in no way detracts from the exquisite design throughout the movie. From the elegant, well documented interiors of Yves and Pierre's Parisian apartments, to the bohemian Moroccan lifestyle they enjoyed with the likes of Loulou de la Falaise and Karl Lagerfeld.

This film was a joy to watch with a standout performance by Pierre Niney, whose voice and mannerisms made Yves live once again.