In an attempt to better
understand this movie I went online to see what others had said about it. In
reading those comments I found it amazing to think that we had watched the same
movie. The reviews that praised this film discussed things that I didn’t recall
ever seeing in the two and a half hours the film lasted. They also derived
things from the movie that I’m still trying to figure out how they arrived at.
The movie is a biopic of the
famous designer Yves Saint Laurent, considered one of the greatest names in
fashion design who ever lived. The film covers only a decade of his life
beginning in the late sixties and running through the seventies. It doesn’t
follow a straight pattern here but instead jumps back and forth in time, a film
device that works in some cases but for me did nothing but confuse here.
The movie seems less focused
on his accomplishments and more about his personal life. While some of his
designs are put on display as are sequences that show him drawing new designs,
there is little personal feel to those segments. The same cannot be said of the
sexual liaisons that Saint Laurent was involved in. But even that is never
quite clear. Was his gay lifestyle an open one taking place in the late sixties
or was it hidden? I was never quite sure from the film. Behind the scenes,
which is where many of those parts of the film take place, there is plenty of
nudity and affection on display but never how well it was known when the movie
takes place.
The film moves along at a
snail’s pace with numerous scenes that seem to last forever but that deliver
nothing in the way of storytelling. One example, one that someone else praised,
shows Saint Laurent sitting in a nightclub and watching a model dance to the
song “I Put a Spell on You” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, a song that last
4:31 according to the album notes the song is on. During this time he watches
as the model, Loulou, dances. He smiles and eventually walks up to her and
tells her to come work for him to which she replies no. This goes back and
forth over and over, both of them smiling as they speak. For over 4 minutes.
Other than the fact she does go to work for him in the next scene I’m still
trying to figure out why we spent that time learning next to nothing.
By the end of the film I had
learned very little about the man Yves Saint Laurent other than the fact he was
gay, drank and did drugs and designed women’s clothing. The design part I knew
going in, the rest didn’t matter to me. As I started writing this column I
looked up information about the man online and learned more in ten minutes of
reading about him than I learned in the two and a half hours I spent watching
this film. In looking into it I see that the film was nominated for numerous
awards which again proves my feelings that awards are less about accomplishment
and more about politics than they’ve ever been.
The film has been released on
disc without a dubbed soundtrack so that might be a turn off to some from the
start. The subtitles are presented clearly so that’s a plus for fans of foreign
films. Know going in though that this is one you will have to read to know
what’s going on.
I’m not one to usually warn
people away from movies and realize that hard work and effort goes into them by
an entire crew of people behind the scenes. That being said the only thing that
works here are the technical aspects of the film, the cinematography to start
with. The rest is an incredible bore from the acting to the script to the
directing. I doubt that the fashion world is full of gunplay and fist fights
but a movie that is a biographical depiction of a person’s life should at least
be interesting. Somehow this film has made the life of Yves Saint Laurent
boring and hum drum.
Click here to order.
No comments:
Post a Comment