about imperial ass-kissing. The film proclaims to be the closest to reality version of YSL's ascendancy and troubled middle years, what with all the couture and sketches from the archive, that had the approval of Mr. Berge. Also his astonishment by Niney's portrayal of YSL. And that should be enough.
Yet the moment off-screen narration steps in, with the voice of an elderly version of Mr. Berge, as in an extension from his funeral eulogy for YSL, we are in deep, troubled waters. Is this a personal letter in the form of a movie feature length film? Does it inaugurate something new, something equal to its initiative, given the imperial gesture? The motive seems little more than ass-kissing. People may object that Mr. Berge has the same chauffeur for decades, and that tells something about the man, but you cannot go into film-making with that kind of mentality; at least, you cannot supervise it thoroughly. And the fact that he chose a first time director, instead of someone more experienced to handle such a dramatic life that calls for insight, should make us pause and think.
As it is, Pierre Niney gives a wondrous impersonation; but this is not acting. The film soon derails after its beginnings, into a run-by-the-numbers descent into drugs, insecurity, jealousy, retaliation, beauty and second-rate shenanigans portrait of a couple's life that seems as interchangeable as any. Should we care for Mr. Berge's "sincerity" in exposing himself as a vindictive personality who wanted to control YSL's life by getting into his bed everybody the former cared for? Yes, we should care, by condemning this self-aggrandizement AND advertisement, for it is nothing else, and no one should buy into the "sincere" element of this loathsome behavior.
But in order not to be abstractly moralistic, I will ground what I suggest in more detail: watch Gallieni's gaze that has something epicene, which the actual Begre surely lacks: this is a fictional detail that calls for unwarranted sympathy.
For all the Marrakech scenery, the LSD sequence comes off as offensively unimaginative; clown faces in the camera, really? This severely undermines YSL's vision, who may have experimented with drugs but not like a deluded off-shore May '68 student: after his sojourn there he came back with the sublime scandal of the first see-through blouse. Where is that? Where is the '71 Occupation show scandal? Of all the references to his shows all we get is the famous and respected Russian one from 1976 that is presented in the film in a mortuary manner. And then the appearance of Berge's old age suddenly talking to a ghost. Please. Spare us the badly edited sanctimony.
The film has only the fashion, the sketches, the lodgings and the artifacts to offer, but this does not amount to film exactly; the film feels introverted, with YSL's friends and court curiously lacklustre, with none whatsoever evocation of the era's scale, of the persons' complexity or/and vision, as if it all was a mundane party affair of a middle shots sensibility and eye for space and how people occupy and move around it. May the garden forgive and forget.
One sincerely hopes that the forthcoming film about YSL, since it does not have the approval of Mr. Berge will deal with less archival respectability. I for one hope that it will deal, since it is yet again a young actor portraying YSL, with the guerre des dentelles (pauvre Lagerfeldt, by the way) in a less hammy manner. Who knows? Perhaps one day we will have a feature covering the 80's wars between Berge and Arnault, or one for the 1990 January show and its aftermath with the Opera Bastille opening with Les Troyens, with Aeneas flying from the fallen city of Troy and his ill-stared love for Dido. Tell me about some story-within-a-story operatic lace, not some Marrakech chewed up-scenery in a sophomore manner for the emperor.
Yet the moment off-screen narration steps in, with the voice of an elderly version of Mr. Berge, as in an extension from his funeral eulogy for YSL, we are in deep, troubled waters. Is this a personal letter in the form of a movie feature length film? Does it inaugurate something new, something equal to its initiative, given the imperial gesture? The motive seems little more than ass-kissing. People may object that Mr. Berge has the same chauffeur for decades, and that tells something about the man, but you cannot go into film-making with that kind of mentality; at least, you cannot supervise it thoroughly. And the fact that he chose a first time director, instead of someone more experienced to handle such a dramatic life that calls for insight, should make us pause and think.
As it is, Pierre Niney gives a wondrous impersonation; but this is not acting. The film soon derails after its beginnings, into a run-by-the-numbers descent into drugs, insecurity, jealousy, retaliation, beauty and second-rate shenanigans portrait of a couple's life that seems as interchangeable as any. Should we care for Mr. Berge's "sincerity" in exposing himself as a vindictive personality who wanted to control YSL's life by getting into his bed everybody the former cared for? Yes, we should care, by condemning this self-aggrandizement AND advertisement, for it is nothing else, and no one should buy into the "sincere" element of this loathsome behavior.
But in order not to be abstractly moralistic, I will ground what I suggest in more detail: watch Gallieni's gaze that has something epicene, which the actual Begre surely lacks: this is a fictional detail that calls for unwarranted sympathy.
For all the Marrakech scenery, the LSD sequence comes off as offensively unimaginative; clown faces in the camera, really? This severely undermines YSL's vision, who may have experimented with drugs but not like a deluded off-shore May '68 student: after his sojourn there he came back with the sublime scandal of the first see-through blouse. Where is that? Where is the '71 Occupation show scandal? Of all the references to his shows all we get is the famous and respected Russian one from 1976 that is presented in the film in a mortuary manner. And then the appearance of Berge's old age suddenly talking to a ghost. Please. Spare us the badly edited sanctimony.
The film has only the fashion, the sketches, the lodgings and the artifacts to offer, but this does not amount to film exactly; the film feels introverted, with YSL's friends and court curiously lacklustre, with none whatsoever evocation of the era's scale, of the persons' complexity or/and vision, as if it all was a mundane party affair of a middle shots sensibility and eye for space and how people occupy and move around it. May the garden forgive and forget.
One sincerely hopes that the forthcoming film about YSL, since it does not have the approval of Mr. Berge will deal with less archival respectability. I for one hope that it will deal, since it is yet again a young actor portraying YSL, with the guerre des dentelles (pauvre Lagerfeldt, by the way) in a less hammy manner. Who knows? Perhaps one day we will have a feature covering the 80's wars between Berge and Arnault, or one for the 1990 January show and its aftermath with the Opera Bastille opening with Les Troyens, with Aeneas flying from the fallen city of Troy and his ill-stared love for Dido. Tell me about some story-within-a-story operatic lace, not some Marrakech chewed up-scenery in a sophomore manner for the emperor.