angelsunchained
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.
brnk4
If you're new to the whole idea of Yves Saint Laurent, you'd probably like to watch the other movie, YSL by Jalil Lespert. It presents Yves' life in a fairly linear fashion, with reason and logic (and history, nonetheless) determining the scenes following one another, brightened by a wide range of characters of all types and colors. However, while watching it, I felt as if I would have been sitting at a boring History class with a boring old school teacher who was bored himself with what he was teaching. I'd name this History teacher Pierre Berge, Yves' long term companion and lover, as despite the film bearing the name Yves Saint Laurent, after Pierre is introduced 13 minutes into the movie, the whole perspective from which everything that happens is presented shifts, not sure if willingly or not. Either way, if I'm interested in Pierre's perspective, I should be watching a movie called Pierre Berge, right? Bertrand Bonello's version, SL, on the other hand, is everything YSL is not. It works not only as satisfying our (presupposed) need to know more about YSL's life, but it does it with style, while still being able to entertain, in a way a conscious filmmaker would do, who has a certain public in mind, to trigger their points of interest. We're talking about non-linear storytelling wrapped in a clever structure which stands far from messing us up with its seemingly disorganized, jumpy time line, but it adds color, life, and impression to the same skeleton that YSL just wasn't able to. YSL is more of a documentary consisting of reconstructed scenes, whereas with SL you have scenes that work within themselves, not only in the context of the whole movie. Here I felt the focus having been really put on his passion, the way he worked, his environment, his temper when he worked, his temper when he was off-work (still looking for models), the esteem and respect that was given to him by everyone who worked for him. The time period of 1968-1970 is presented in a highly ironic way, in the form of a split-screen, where on one side we see political events of the real world while on the other side we see models presenting the spring and autumn collections of a totally different high-end world, as suggested by the split screen, yet both of them occurring in the same year, in the same location. A home-party scene is reminiscent of Chabrol's scene of the same nature in Les Cousins (1959). We see impressionistic, abstract scenes and shots which instead of halting our flow, along with the excellently chosen, and used music engulfs us further in. On the other hand there's the business meeting scene with an American shareholder, in which the prolonged overlapping dialog of Pierre, the translator and the American suck us back into the realistic aspect of this seemingly dreamy world filled with art, beautiful women, and bohemian lifestyle. About one hour and a half into the movie the fourth wall is obliterated with a cute little reflexive scene which looks like a one-shot commercial. I could go on and on.Bonello's SL goes after your feelings, consciously and successfully using the language of cinema, with all its tricks up its sleeve, magically unraveling the magic of Yves.
sjrenter
Looked forward to this version of the YSL saga. Was disappointed in the first, Yves Saint Laurent, so had high hopes for this one which was favorably reviewed. One wonders what film the NYT reviewer had watched? This mess is not properly a film, at best it is an indulgent impressionist biography. There is no narrative, no story-line, no characters (let alone character development). I doubt that without some knowledge of YSL's life one could follow the film. I even doubt that one would be interested in doing so. The actors are first class but given their abilities they are as wasted as was my time being bored for the 150 minutes of creeping, not running, time of Saint Laurent.
djv-1301
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.
