Yves Saint Laurent

The film Yves Saint Laurent gives you exactly what you expect. There is nothing much extra. It's the world of fashion, so there will be fashion, there will be intrigues, there will be extravagant lifestyles, there will be excesses, simply everything that belongs there. And the personality of one of the fashion geniuses. He fits right into that world. (07/04/2017)

A nice biopic, but nothing special. It has beautiful pictures that flow nicely. Connoisseurs of the life and work of Yves Saint Laurent will certainly know more, and yet for those who don't revere his brand as much, it can nevertheless be an interesting introduction to the world of French haute couture from the 1950s onwards. Saint Laurent was born in Oran, so it is very interesting to see this influence on his life and fashion. Otherwise, the film is a nice melodrama, and Saint Laurent's relationship with Pierre Bergé is of course imbued with emotion. Pretty models and insight into pop culture are a given. (04/04/2020)

Saint Laurent is presented to us a brilliant designer, as a man struggling with manic depression, as a drug addict and as an extraordinarily sensitive lover. However, the screenplay doesn’t manage to approach him as an ordinary human being whose actions would be taken together to form a convincing psychological profile. Unfortunately, the extreme aspects of the human psyche are more attractive to viewers. The narrative structure sadly exhibits the same instability as Saint Laurent. The film jumps from one episode to the next while making no attempt to develop key motifs or to find a theme that would be determinative for Saint Laurent’s life. The characters lack motivation; the story lacks conflict and purpose. Like its one-dimensional protagonist, a walking pile of character traits, the film offers no mystery that would raise questions or uncertainty. Saint Laurent’s film life does not go beyond the boundaries of his private space toward a socio-political context and Saint Laurent himself is defined solely through his relationship to the other characters. The narrative changes him into a passive victim of external circumstances who is constantly wounded by others. As faithfully as the images simulate a certain era and particular setting, they lack stronger interconnectedness and any kind of depth. Among other things, the scenes of fashion shows, which attempt to give an inappropriate impression of something noble, fulfil a similar role as the outfits on display. They appear, are pleasing to the eye, and then disappear. Lespert only shows, but doesn’t tell. For the whole hundred minutes. Everything begins and ends on the surface. I hope that Bertrand Bonello, whose biopic about YSL should have its premiere in October, will try to not only show the famous designer, but also understand him. 50% (03/26/2014)

It was interesting to watch the life of this fashion designer. The movie adaptation really isn’t bad. The stuff that goes on in the movie is worse, though. It actually doesn’t have much of a storyline. Rather, it focuses on individual situations or individual time periods. So, you see Yves and his warm relationship with guys, then you see Yves smoking weed with his hippie friends. Thankfully, you don’t see much of Yves designing, which would probably be boring. On the other hand, I am not saying that the scenes I mentioned before weren’t boring. It was actually rather annoying. It’s annoying because they all act like dicks. And when everybody pisses you off, you can hardly be excited about a biopic like this one. But it was nice to see the movie and realize how some people lived or are still living. (03/03/2018)