SAINT LAURENT – The Review

It’s time for a quick break from the bombastic Summer fare, and briefly enter the world of big screen biographies, a genre usually reserved for those serious cooler months, closer to awards season. In this new (for stateside audiences) release we aren’t examining the life of a figure from the annals of historical science like the recent Oscar winners THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING or THE IMITATION GAME. No, we’re heading into the world of the arts (an arena for several terrific feature documentaries of late). But the subject is not from the world of fine art, like those films concerning painters such as POLLACK or SURVIVING PICASSO. Nor is this based on a music maestro like NOWHERE BOY and the film still in theatres LOVE AND MERCY (and if you’re not seen this dazzling look inside the mind and work of Brian Wilson, by all means drive, run, or surf to your local cinema). This is that rare biography of a fashion icon. Now there have been a couple of films concerning 30’s designer Coco Chanel, but this film takes a look at a more recent fashion icon, one whose influence is still felt. His initials still emblazen several labels. From across the pond, comes a look at the life of the man behind YSL, Yves SAINT LAURENT.

Unlike many screen bios, this film begins during the peak of the subject’s world-wide fame. It’s 1974, and YSL (Gaspard Ulliel) checks himself into a swank Paris hotel, “to sleep”. But before his head touches the pillow, he’s on the phone to a magazine interviewer. Yves relates the horrors of his conscription into the Algerian army over a dozen years before, of battling for his sanity while in a military hospital as he kept predators at bay. The story shifts back to 1967, as the very much in demand (he’s the exclusive clothier for France’s film icon Catherine Deneuve) Yves is preparing to launch a new clothing line at the popular design house he established with his business and personal partner Pierre Berge (Jeremie Renier), the man who “rescued” Yves from that medical nightmare. In between overseeing his overworked staff of seamstresses, he sketches out ideas for new dresses and suits. After business hours, he is a regular at all the trendy hot spots. At one such dance club, Yves meets his fashion muse, the gorgeous blond model Betty Cartroux (Aymeline Valade). And when the clubs close, Yves haunts the seedier parts of Paris, amongst the young “hustlers”. The years pass, the accolades pile up, and Yves spends much of his free time at the Marrakesh get away he shares with Pierre. As the pressures mount, he indulges his ravenous appetite for champagne, prescription pills, and anonymous sex. Later, as Pierre deals with the demands of the company’s American partners, Yves becomes obsessed with a high-priced gigolo, Jacques (Louis Garrel). As the money piles up and the years fade, Yves descends further into addiction.

Ulliel (whom audience may recall as young Dr. Lechter in HANNIBAL RISING) brings a vibrant physicality to the title character, with a regal, refined air, looking impeccable in the vintage attire, but isn’t permitted to go beyond the surface of the man behind the brand. Often his Yves seems to be a ghost, gliding through the office and floating down the runway always in search of the next distraction, be it a bottle, a pill, or a lover. There’s a hint of the inner torment in his phone “interview”, but it’s never really explored. There are flashes of Yves as a child, scribbling his paper doll creatures. And there’s a middle-aged Yves, post 1989, essayed by Helmut Berger, who trudges down his plush hallways, passing expensive treasures like a dapper, bespectacled Charles Foster Kane. But his late in life interview peels away little of the enigma. The same could also be said of Renier as the man behind the man, the business wizard supporting the fashion genius. He fights fiercely for Yves in the boardrooms and banks, while tolerating his serial promiscuity. Valade makes quite an impression as Cartoux, perhaps the coolest of “cool blondes” (as Hitchcock coined them), a riveting vision who becomes the only focus on the dance floor. While studying her every move, Yves even imagines himself as her twin doppelgänger. But once he draws her into his web, and studio, she’s just another extra during the constant festivities. The same could be said for another French beauty, Lea Seydoux (unforgettable in BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR and soon to be a Bond girl in SPECTRE) as Loulou, YST confidant and accessory designer. Beside a bit of dialogue about bracelets, she’s just there to match Yves in guzzling booze and chain smoking.

They’re a talented cast that’s been set adrift by the script written by director Bertrand Bonello and Thomas Bidegain. And the snail-paced direction by Bonello doesn’t serve them well either, making the 150 minutes feel like an actual decade. He shows a bit of style, evoking 1960’s cinema by showing the passage of time in a too brief sequence. It’s a split screen with the left half filled with grainy, black and white news footage, while candy colored fashions display on the right with the same spiral stairway backdrop, and the concurrent years (1968, 1969, etc…) at bottom screen center. But quickly it’s back to the endless parties and orgies with the cast downing crates of bubbly, and cases of Marlboros (it’s a wonder I didn’t acquire a hacking cough in addition to the nausea). By the midpoint, any sympathy the audience has worked up for Yves because of his drug addiction is wiped clean when an act of reckless indulgence causes the horrific death of an innocent in a most repugnant sequence (be warned PETA members). Plus several scenes of gratuitous nudity, perhaps meant to shock us from the tedium, just seem desperate. Those wanting to know more about the creative spirit will gain little insight into the man or the fashion icon by enduring the tawdry, laborious SAINT LAURENT

1.5 Out of 5