Browse all reviews by letter     A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0 - 9

France 2014
Directed by
Jalil Lespert
106 minutes
Rated MA

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

Yves Saint Laurent

For those who enjoy contemplating the decadent world of high fashion in general and the designs of Yves Saint Laurent in particular Jalil Lespert’s biopic has plenty to offer.

Tracing Saint Laurent’s life and work from the late 1950s in Paris when at the remarkable age of 21 he became the artistic director of the House of Dior to the late 1970s when his health was beginning to deteriorate and his significant work as a designer was behind him, the film, is a quite candid account of Saint Laurent’s mental instability, homosexuality and drug use. Given that much of this was a mirror of the society of the time the film also makes for a stylish social portrait, one that recalls the fictional world of Performance, with its dangerously mind-bending hermeticism.

In the lead Pierre Niney does a good job of recreating the iconic figure with his lanky frame, tousled hair and trademark spectacles although it is a role that requires more in mannerism than dramatic projection and sometimes this can be a little too much and too little. Yves Saint Laurent is not a film that probes deep into either its subject’s emotional or artistic life. 

Using the voice-over of Saint Laurent’s longtime companion and business partner, Pierre Bergé (Guillaume Gallienne) to provide a narrative structure Lespert is content to take us through a brief display of the iconic couture (though most of these seem to be the outcome of canny appropriation perhaps this is true of all artists) and gives most of the attention to a behind-the-scenes portrayal of the over-wrought, near neurasthenic designer’s succumbing to the saturnalia of the 70s. There’s not much sense of the real YSL in amongst the sybaritic indulgence but, according to this version of it at least, there is no question that while it lasted it was a marvellous party.

Show detailed review

 

 

back

Want something different?

random vintage best worst