Documentary. Unrated. 1 hour, 40 minutes. At the Mayan.
When he died in 2008, 71-year-old fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent left behind the big house full of valuable art that was his clothing company and several actual houses full of equally valuable art. He also left behind one man to deal with it all.
Pierre Berge met Laurent 50 years ago at Christian Dior’s funeral. They started dating, then started a business. Both relationships thrived until Saint Laurent’s death.
By the time director Pierre Thoretton catches up with Berge, he’s begun preparing the collection for sale. The movie Thoretton’s made, “L’Amour Fou,” is ironic. It’s a term that conveys wild, passionate love.
But there’s nothing “fou” about the movie. It’s a calm, quiet piece of impressionism. It doesn’t need the fou. But it does need more than just Berge’s narrated reminiscences and shot after shot of the exteriors of these admittedly amazing residences in Deauville and Marrakech.
Looking at the gigantic Durand vases and Brancusi sculptures, at the Picassos and Matisses, at all this beautiful, precious stuff — Christie’s put 733 pieces up for auction — you sense that this fabulously well-appointed couple are just cat people by a different name.
This is all to say that “L’Amour Fou” is about the man behind the madness and the fashion. It’s about the pragmatist of the operation. It’s about a businessman and a partner, and how the partner is ready, poignantly, to move on and try to let go.
Thoretton feigns a passing interest in the clothes. A 6-second-or-so cape montage. Twenty-three more of Russia wear. A quarter of a minute of Marrakech-inspired designs.
The past few years have produced a number of very good or extremely interesting movies about the legendary fashion designers — Karl Lagerfeld, Coco Chanel, Halston, and, best of all, Valentino. “L’Amour Fou” is the first to imply that the clothes don’t matter, to be blase about fashion. But the movie is blase about everything else, too.
We never get a sense about how socially revolutionary their dual partnership was. How did it survive the scrutiny of the 1960s and of Morocco? Berge is a gay-rights activist and philanthropist. Saint Laurent was not a political man, we’re told. Neither, apparently, is the director.
Saint Laurent is credited with inventing ready-to-wear and for putting sex into tuxedos for women. But, really, he was the greatest pure artist of all the legendary designers.
The clothes are what matter to the world. I suspect Berge understands that everything else is ghosts.
Exclusive run at DAM
The Denver Art Museum will be the only United States venue for “Yves Saint Laurent,” an internationally touring retrospective surveying the designer’s 40 years of creativity. The exhibition, which features 200 of Saint Laurent’s haute couture garments along with related photographs, drawings and films, will be on view March 25-July 7, 2012. For more information, call 720-865-5000 or visit .
