Laura Smet
Occupation
Actor
Yves Saint Laurent Review
By Rich Cline
Good
Like Coco Before Chanel, this French designer biopic is far too respectful of its subject to come to life properly as a movie. It's gorgeous to look at, and features striking performances and a strong central story. But filmmaker Jalil Lespert maintains a too-worthy tone that makes the storyline drag badly, even though there's a strikingly intriguing relationship at the centre.
The film picks up the story of Yves Saint Laurent (Pierre Niney) in the 1950s, when the 21-year-old hotshot is shaking up Paris as a designer for Christian Dior. When military service costs him his job and shakes his mental health, his lover Pierre Berge (Guillaume Gallienne) steps in and becomes his professional partner, helping him establish YSL as an iconic brand. Over the decades Yves reinvents fashion by combining classic looks with imaginative flourishes. As he falls into drugs and alcohol to cope with the overpowering expectations, it's Pierre who keeps him going and manages the company to global powerhouse status. Although outside liaisons put a strain on their personal relationship.
Lespert does a remarkable job at capturing Saint Laurent's visual aesthetic, filling the screen with bold colours, sleek lines and achingly beautiful clothes. The immaculately recreated catwalk shows are stunning, while the raucously staged parties are packed with actors playing iconic figures. But all of these people are little more than bursts of colour in an otherwise glum movie.
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Yves Saint Laurent - Teaser Trailer
Yves Saint Laurent is a 21-year-old aspiring fashion designer whose sketches have caught the eye of one of France's most revered fashion giants, Christian Dior. When Yves finds himself the successor of Dior's fashion house, he suddenly finds himself a major celebrity; a status which grows at the arrival of his first catwalk show. It's there he meets Pierre Bergé, with whom he falls in love and the pair quickly become business partners. However, life becomes more complicated when Yves finds himself fired, and his life spirals into a whirlwind of humiliation, media savagery, drugs and mental illness. Despite his problems, however, he still manages to impress the world with his first collection - a move which would change the world of haute couture forever.
'Yves Saint Laurent' is a biographical drama based on the colourful life of the world renowned designer of the same name. Based on the biography 'Letters to Yves' by Laurence Benaïm, the movie has been directed and co-written by Jalil Lespert ('Headwinds', '24 Bars') with previous screenplay collaborator Marie-Pierre Huster ('Amitiés sincères', 'Headwinds') and Jacques Fieschi ('Going Away', 'Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud'). 'Yves Saint Laurent' is set to be unveiled in the UK on March 21st 2014.
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The Bridesmaid Review
Good
At first glance, she doesn't seem like much -- maybe it's the dress. When Philippe (Benoit Magimel) -- the slim, self-satisfied, smart-but-stupid chump in Claude Chabrol's psycho-drama The Bridesmaid -- sees Senta (Laura Smet), a bridesmaid at his sister's wedding, he's intrigued by something in her direct stare and later, flirty brush-off. However, when Senta appears unannounced at the door of his mother's home (where Philippe, a mama's boy practically smothered by her constant compliments) a few hours later and then proceeds to strip off the wet dress and have her reckless way with him, he becomes positively interested. When later she starts in with all that talk about how they're fated for each other and, hey, what if they each committed a murder to prove their love, he remains interested because, well, he doesn't have much else going on in his life.
In Smet and Magimel, Chabrol has found willing partners for his bleak little tale -- like the director, they keep things under wraps, playing things close to the vest, which is harder than it may sound, given the high drama plot, taken from a Ruth Rendell novel. Philippe is a cipher straight from a detective story of years past, working as a numbers guy for a contractor in a small French town, he's completely bottled up inside his trim suits and slightly superior demeanor, just aching for something to come along and bust things up. After easing us into Philippe's life with some minor melodrama involving the three women in Philippe's house (mother, two sisters), Chabrol drops Senta in to knock Philippe out of his rut, and she's perfect for the job.
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