Saint Laurent

YSL was an artsy mess, so I suppose it's fitting that this film is as well. It looks gorgeous and has a great time rubbernecking Yves's hedonistic ways, but it's also pretty mean-spirited. It doesn't attempt to understand Yves or what drove him or his creative process. He's just a rich, spoiled jerk in this film.

Also, I enjoy a good nonlinear art film, but they are hard to pull off. This film is very hard to follow if you don't already know YSL's biography and work, and there are many long, pointless scenes that are supposed to be symbolic but don't really add up to much. It does have some fantastic performances and great set pieces, and if you like reveling in 1970s hedonism, you'll enjoy it on that level.

Sometimes formulas and conventions are a good thing. The rival film to this one Yves St. Laurent may be far more conventional, but it is at least coherent and has genuine empathy for Yves and Pierre. Plus, it features the actual clothes Yves's designed.

If you're a student of fashion, it's fun to compare the two films, but I think the more conventional one wins the day simply for being a more pleasant experience to watch.

"Saint Laurent" (2014 release; 150 min.) is another bio-pic on the fashion designer. As the movie opens, it is "1974", where we see Yves checking into a hotel in Paris under the name "Swann". We see him making a call to presumably a reporter, informing him that he's ready for the interview. The movie then jumps to "1967", and the fashion house is in full swing to get its latest collection of "haute couture" ready We get to appreciate how Yves goes about as he is working, always with classical music on. At this time we are barely 10 min. into the movie, but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: first, you may remember that last year produced not one, but two YSL bio-pics out of France: there was "Yves Saint Laurent", and then there was this. The former is well-intended but wafer-thin, lacking any depth. No such problem with this movie, which takes you into the world of YSL, both the person and the business, and then some. Writer-director Bertrand Bonello has the audacity (and I mean it in the best possible way) of letting scenes develop slowly but with purpose. Check the scene early in the movie (in 1968) where YSL is at a night club. CCR's I Put A Spell On You comes blasting on, and eventually a gorgeous blonde steps onto the dance floor and dances to the music. YSL watches, and watches, and watches, and eventually decides to approach her: "You need to come work for me, I will design a collection for you". By then we are almost at the end of CCR's song, which played for minutes on. It is one of the best scenes of the movie, but it certainly is not the only time that Bonello uses this technique. The last 45 min. are also the best, as only then we get a glimpse of YSL's youth, and the movie also flashes forth towards his last days, all the while as we continue to see him in 1977. Fascinating. At some point, while trying to come up with yet another new collection, YSL sighs "I created a monster and now I have to live with it", wow. Gaspard Ulliel, an unknown to me, is brilliant in the role of YSL. Please note: there are several scenes with full male frontal nudity. Last but not least, director Bonello also composed the occasional score for the movie, but he also collected a ton of great songs for the movie from that era (CCR, Velvet Underground, the Four Seasons, as well as several classical music pieces from Maria Callas, just to name those). "Saint Laurent" had 10 nominations for the French equivalent of the Oscars, and it's easy to see why. This is an ambitious and mostly successful bio-pic.

I saw the other YSL bio-pic about a year ago and was eagerly awaiting this one. Not sure why it has taken this long, but "Saint Laurent" finally opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and I went to see it right away. The matinée screening where I saw this at was attended better than expected (I wouldn't have been shocked had there only been a couple of people). Bottom line: even it is a bit overlong, "Saint Laurent" is easily the better of the two YSL bio-pics from last year, so I'd readily recommend you check this out, be it in the theater, or eventually on VOD or DVD/Blu-ray. "Saint Laurent" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

This was one of the most boring films I've ever seen, and that's coming from someone who is interested in haute couture and Yves Saint Laurent. Slow paced would be an understatement: it moved at snail's pace and created the impression that Yves led one of the dullest lives in the history of man.

Most reviewers rate this biopic as being superior to the other one released in the same year, titled Yves Saint Laurent (which was endorsed by Pierre Berge with access to the YSL archives). However, while I wasn't enamoured of this latter version (it too was on the boring side), the characters were more fleshed out and believable, and more of the important people in YSL's life were included in that picture than this one.

The three stars I gave this movie were all for Helmut Berger as the ageing Yves Saint Laurent. Having seen footage of YSL in the later stages of his life, Helmut's portrayal was eerily accurate.

I thought this would be an interesting and exciting movie, was I wrong. The film maker makes the wild 1960s, the dull and boring 1960s. Frontal male nudity and gay sex is about as shocking as watching as a turtle slowly walking around the floor. There is no life to this film. No feelings. It is all show with long and dull scenes which are meant to be "earth shattering", but are just boring. A beautiful model is shown dancing by herself twice in a club in a nothing scene which goes on and on. A group of investors are shown talking in a room for an extremely dull ten minute scene with lousy acting, again void of any emotion. I give it a 4 out of 10 only for the beautiful women and lovely fashion. The acting and the screenplay rate a minus 100.

I want to love this film - the acting is wonderful and the art direction is spectacular - the cinematography, locations, costuming, even the soundtrack. However, the story is disjointed and badly edited.

It is also essential that the viewer knows the characters in YSL's life before seeing this film because there are many oblique references to people that will go over most people's heads and not enough explanation to understand who some of these people were and why they were so influential. There are also a couple of gratuitous nude scenes that cheapen the film because they look like a desperate attempt to win over an audience by exposing the considerable asset of the lead actor. The film also suffers from being a smidgen too long - I was restless in my chair by the end.

Despite this, there are some excellent scenes in this film that are beautifully written, acted, and shot. The opening sequence in the workrooms in 1967 is elegant, the woman buying the pant suit is poignant, the party scenes at the discotheques in the 1960s and 1970s are exciting to watch, and the split screens with the fashions and newsreel films are clever.

I couldn't help but think that a fresh edit might make this a much better film.