Kenzo: Kenzo World

The beauty and force of what is essentially a perfume ad by Spike Jonze is that you can watch it with the sound off (as I did previously undercover while at work, for example) and it still carries a tremendous punch - through decades of music video and feature film work, this man is simply great at showing moving images that communicate everything that's there without needing a bit of sound. A lot of this can be attributed to the actress, Margaret Qualley, and how much she puts into this performance, and it is FULL performance where every bone, joint, muscle, and eye-lid is put to work. At first what seems to be some award-dinner or ceremony is left behind as Qualley goes into the hallway, at first seems like she's about to cry about something, and then... BOOM, it's time to do a dance so off-kilter it'd make Elaine Benes look like Fred Astaire.

It's impossible for me to watch this and not think specifically of the Jonze directed video for 'Weapon of Choice' by Fatboy Slim; in that, Christopher Walken simply gets up from a chair and at the drop of a beat dances all around a lobby and hallways of a hotel, leading up to him leaping off the balcony and flying around. This has that energy and the motivation of the movement of the camera is dictated by the actor once again, only this time it's the movement of a wild animal, as Qualley runs, jumps, flexes backward, does manic contortions and, at one point, even jumps through a giant, uh, sewn- together eyeball outside. It's like Weapon of Choice if you mixed in demonic- possession (i.e. this girl is possibly the Gatekeeper from Ghostbusters or something on crack).

This is insane stuff, but it's directed and presented by a visual master, and Qualley is game for everything that Jonze wants to imagine.

Let's be real, it'd be hard to make something with all of the elements here and come out with something bad: a talented nepo baby, good choreography, a beautiful setting, marvelous wardrobe, Spike Jonze behind the lens, and a stellar track to boot.

But where Weapon of Choice's entertainment stemmed from getting to see to see how much spunk was left in Walken from his dancing days, Kenzo World is just a self-contained perfume ad whose motif is undone by the commercialism it's partaking in.

We get it; this is a strong, independent, energetic, complex woman who is not where she wants to be in life, her feelings muted by the high society she's trapped in-- but in the end she finds escape from these feelings by... jumping through the corporate logo of a perfume being sold, and we learn that her complexities are what's been contained in this... perfume.

It overwrites the entire point of what it had going for it and falls flat on its face, as most commercials do wherein they're trying to persuade you to express your individualism through consumerism.

Anyways, this was pretty much just a paycheck for everyone involved, and not anything all that noteworthy.

And HI to someone on the crew! I guess! As it wasn't until I reviewed this movie that someone went through and downvoted all my reviews. Sorry you worked on such a lame duck!