First of all it is absolutely amazing to see a music video that is basically shot as a film on proper film material with a huge budget. Secondly: you get to see the delightful Mylene Farmer naked. That in itself is worth watching the film. The film is basically a music video to a fairly timeless dance-floor song which has very well written lyrics in 18th century France. The images are fairly powerful and the message is amoral. Visually the film is very interesting as opposed to later videos by Mylene Farmer where she essentially uses a very Baroque or rather Rokkoko imagery to give ordinary pop songs a depth which they haven't got. It's interesting, it's sexy, it's intelligent. I have to say though that I found the sequel with its S/M images fairly disturbing.
2 Reviews
Great song, not so great video
Horst_In_Translation22 July 2016
Warning: Spoilers
This is "Libertine", the music video for the song with the same name by Mylène Farmer. This one has its 30th anniversary this year and it is from the mid-1980s when Farmer was in her mid-20s. And it is certainly among her biggest hits. I can totally see why. The song is as catchy as it gets and also has some solid content I dare say. Unfortunately, as spectacular as the music video is (also at 11 minutes) for something from the 1980s, it has not aged well at all sadly. It looks very much style over substance to me by today's standards and over the top. Obviously they wanted this to be as controversial as possible with the nudity and sex scenes as social standards in terms of these aspects were entirely different then of course. The result is a pretentious piece of filmmaking that does no justice at all to the great song. Maybe listening to the record is the best choice. I still give it a thumbs-up for Farmer and the nice song. Recommended.
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