Celebration

The grace and elegance of French fashion.

 (2007) Documentary (Kimstim/1091) Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint-Laurent, Loulou De La Falaise, Catherine Deneuve, Laetitia Casta. Directed by Olivier Meyrou

 

The great Yves Saint-Laurent was a fashion icon, one of the last of the great haute couture fashion houses and certainly, as he expresses mournfully in an interview sequence during the film, the last with a living couturier (his fashion house would be sold to Gucci the following year).

Despite the title, this documentary is not so much a celebration as it is an elegy, a look at a great lion in the winter of his life. Shockingly, Saint-Laurent appears almost drugged in much of the film, sometimes appearing to be nodding off, other times being remonstrated with by his business partner and life partner Pierre Bergé not to lean over the podium before giving a speech so as not to appear as a doddering old man.

Most of the film revolves around a show the old master is putting together, what would turn out to be his last (although nobody knew it at the time). We see the apparatus of a major fashion hose humming at the top of its game; the seamstresses, chafing at near-impossible deadlines and an endless series of revisions, the models preening and cooing in the presence of the great man, the publicists trying to make order amidst the chaos and Bergé.

He also doesn’t come off particularly well, often boorish and condescending in his behavior, throwing a temper tantrum due to the presence of a photographer, often making snide and passive-aggressive comments about his partner “He is a sleepwalker, one who should not be awakened.” There is one unbelievable sequence late the film where Saint-Laurent has just won a prestigious award, only to have it nearly ripped out of his arms by Bergé, who says “I probably had a hand in it.” And yes, he probably did but it comes off seeming mean.

The film was screened only once, at the 2007 Berlinale, the year before Saint-Laurent passed away from brain cancer, only to have Bergé sue to have the film suppressed. It wasn’t until after Bergé himself passed on two years ago that the rights became available. After a brief New York theatrical release last October, the film is finally making its way to home video.

Is this an essential documentary? If you are a fashion junkie, no doubt. I don’t know if this is the most flattering portrait of Saint-Laurent possible and it certainly says nothing about his contributions to the industry, which among other things included the introduction of the pantsuit, for which Hilary Clinton should be grateful if nobody else. There is very little context of any sort given here; it is cinema verité in its purest form. That is both good and bad; if you don’t have much knowledge of fashion, you will undoubtedly feel lost and even bored while watching.

Meyrou alternates between using color and black and white in his footage; color for the reality of the work, black and white for contemplation. The music score is a problem; it is often jarring and intrusive, meant, I suppose, to symbolize the frail mental state of Saint-Laurent but coming off largely as inappropriate for the film. You’re better off turning the sound off and reading the subtitles.

One of the more delightful sequences is showing a couple of the seamstresses who return to the fashion house after it had been shuttered, remembering where their desks were, where the time clocks were, remembering a fellow seamstress who had a bad temper nearly clocking one of the two of them with a window.

It is on the one hand a fascinating portrait of Bergé but as for a legacy film for Saint-Laurent, it doesn’t work all that well. In a sense it is a look at the way fashion houses worked in times gone by but it may seem quaint to modern fashionistas. Nonetheless, if you have any sort of interest in the subject at all, it is well worth your time to rent this. If you’re like me and don’t have the interest in women’s clothes, you still might find some fulfillment in watching the interpersonal relationship between Bergé and Saint-Laurent.

REASONS TO SEE: Essential for fashionistas.
REASONS TO AVOID: The musical score is unsettling and at times inappropriate.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a surfeit of smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The documentary was filmed back in 1998 for what would turn out to be St. Laurent’s last show before his house was sold to Gucci. It was kept on the shelf by Berge who felt that it revealed too much about the reclusive fashion icon.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/3//20: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic:  No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Gospel According to Andre
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: Johnny English Strikes Again

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Offside

Coaching resting face.

(2019) Sports Documentary (Green Box Europe) Natalia Baginska, Joanna Patusiak, Joanna Pres, Kinga Szymanska, Martyna Brodzik, Aleksandra Sudyk, Marta Fil, Patrycja Michalczyk, Natalia Grib, Patrycja Trzcinska, Aleksandra Witczak, Roksana Rataczyk, Natalia Oleszkiewicz, Kornelia Grosicka, Lukasz Haliniarz, Martyna Iwanek, Weronika Szymaszek, Beata Niesterowicz. Directed by Miguel Gaudėncio

 

While we in the States tend to think of soccer (called by everybody else football) is a painfully slow and less athletic sport than the manly sport of American football, that’s just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. Football (the non-American kind) requires stamina, skill and intestinal fortitude to push beyond your limits when you are sure you couldn’t possibly run even one more step.

The ladies of the Olimpia Szczecin squad possess that kind of fortitude and much of it is largely due to their coach, Natalia Baginska. Her job is to motivate the women to push themselves higher and harder than they ever have. She is a stern taskmaster and keeps her charges busy as the club, sidelined for the off-season, prepares for the oncoming season with practices, scrimmages and practice games, called “friendlies” in the parlance.

Gaudėncio, a native of Portugal now based in Szczecin, has established a particular style for better or for worse, that is essentially cinema verité along the lines of an Errol Morris. He’s also fond of black and white, which worked nicely for the boxing documentary Down But Not Out but was a tactical error her; Soccer is a sport of color from the rich green of the pitch to the colors of the uniforms. It makes the film more drab than it has to be.

What really disappointed me about the movie though was once again he gives virtually no context about what we’re seeing. Why did he choose this team to follow? What happened with their season? He also doesn’t identify which player is which and we mostly see them in workouts without uniforms so we can’t even figure out the numbers. The games he does show often we get no sense of the flow of the game; there are some bits and pieces of the team on offense, other bits and pieces of the team on defense and occasionally celebrating a goal. We have no idea who they are playing.

We do get a sense that the players work hard and that the coach is a combination therapist and motivational speaker as well as a tactician although we get no particulars about the latter role. We do get plenty of scenes of various body parts on the players getting massaged which I suppose communicates the muscular aches and pains the ladies have to endure but it’s a point that seems to be getting made a bit too repetitively.

Of the three documentaries I’ve seen from Gaudėncio this is by far the one I’ve enjoyed the least. By halfway through the short documentary I was checking the time, praying for the film to end. By the time it did, I felt like I hadn’t gotten to know the coach all that well and the players even less. Not being all that well-schooled in the game of soccer, I can’t even tell you if the team improved over the course of the film.

However, the movie does have the advantage of being timely, released as the United States women’s team was capturing its most recent World Cup title so there might be some interest from that angle. I think it would be a good film for aspiring soccer players both male and female to see what is involved with becoming a top-level player. However cinema buffs may find the film to be a little too disjointed to be all that enjoyable.

REASONS TO SEE: Gives a sense of how hard these athletes work.
REASONS TO AVOID: Lacks any sort of context whatsoever.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some sports action.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Two of the partners in Green Box Europe are originally from Florida but now live in Poland.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, iTunes, Vimeo
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/27/19: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Down, But Not Out
FINAL RATING: 4/10
NEXT: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom