L'Amour fou (2010)
Directed by Pierre Thoretton

Film Review

There's a distinctly Proustian feel to Pierre Thoretton's enticingly elegant tribute to the legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, or rather to the latter's half-century long association with his business partner Pierre Bergé.  The sedate tracking shots through the various well-adorned properties belonging to the couple (including a sumptuous residence in Marrakech) call to mind the haunting opening of Alain Resnais's L'Année dernière à Marienbad and it comes as no surprise to learn that YSL named every room in one of his houses after a character in À la recherche du temps perdu.  For a man who claims not be remotely nostalgic, Pierre Bergé, the film's principal contributor, looks suspiciously like a man in search of lost time as he recounts, with honesty tempered by a certain reserve, his memories of a shared life with the world's most celebrated fashion icon.

Don't expect any shock revelations in this film.  This is the gospel of Saint Laurent according to Pierre Bergé, so the more sordid details of the designer's life (particularly his troubled later years) are deftly skated over.  That YSL was a tormented genius, prone to recurring bouts of depression and susceptible to self-destructive narcotics binges, is already widely known.  What is more surprising are the little insights that Bergé lets slip whilst canonising his erstwhile lover and overseeing the sale of his massive art collection to hoards of vulture-eyed investors.  Bergé admits to seeing Saint Laurent happy only once or twice a year, immediately after presenting his latest collection to a rapturous audience.  It seems that for virtually all of his life YSL was a victim of nervous depression from which he would never escape, despite his best friend's efforts.  Wealth and celebrity meant very little to the man who spent most of his life on the edge of an abyss.  From his own testimony, Saint Laurent's idea of happiness appears to be confined to a bed, bien rempli.

If Bergé is cautious over what he reveals about Saint Laurent he is positively mute when it comes to talking about himself.  He offers not the slightest explanation for his decision to sell off the huge art collection which he and his friend amassed (and which raised almost 400 million euros when it went up for auction at Christie's in 2008).  He elicits not the slightest emotion as the objets d'art and paintings go under the hammer in the film's final sequence and it is left to Thoretton's probing camera to reveal in Bergé's inexpressive countenance the tell-tale signs of bereavement which might account for this apparent act of desecration. 

From Bergé's measured words (mostly well-rehearsed aphorisms) it is hard to get a sense of the amour fou that he shared with Saint Laurent, and this is the film's central weakness.  The archive footage that Thoretton has managed to unearth for his film is equally reticent, and it takes some stretch of the imagination to see how a chronically shy fashion designer and a hard-headed businessman who professes to have no soul could ever have been swept away on a tide of passion, let alone remain on the closest of terms for fifty years.  L'Amour fou takes nothing away from the enigma of YSL but neither does it add a great deal to the sum total of human knowledge.  It's an engaging, well-constructed nostalgia piece that reluctantly offers a few shards of insight, but that's about all.  With Pierre Bergé guarding his legend so faithfully we will probably never know the full story about Yves Saint Laurent.

Film Synopsis

In 1958, Yves Saint Laurent met the man of his life, Pierre Bergé.  For the first time, Bergé talks about his love affair with Saint-Laurent - fifty years of passion and torment, during which time they were to revolutionise the world of women's fashion.  In 2008, after Saint-Laurent's death, Bergé made up his mind to dispose of the art collection which the two men had assembled with such avidity, in their quest for all that is beautiful...