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Film: L’Amour fou (documentary)

Directed by Pierre Thoretton

Starring Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint-Laurent, Loulou de la Falaise, Jack Lang, Catherine Deneuve, Betty Catroux

Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek from the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival

This French documentary by Thoretton chronicles the sale of the art collection amassed by Yves Saint-Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé, over the course of their relationship. Wih Saint-Laurent gone, Bergé deals with the art to the tune of more than $400 million. Of course, it’s not the art that’s perceived to be of most value to the widowed lover.

“L’amour fou” (by translation, “The Crazy Love”) opens with a somber press conference during which Saint-Laurent traverses his career from Christian Dior protégé to pant suits, and discusses his own anxieties, a fear of solitude, and a friendship with drugs taken to experiment and battle his depression demons. At the end of the opening clip, the innovative designer bids farewell to his profession.

Countering the finality of this statement is his partner of fifty years, Pierre Bergé, speaking at his lover’s funeral in support of the paradox that love springs eternal. Saint-Laurent’s death, saluted by ceremony, signified the end of an era in which a home had been filled with frivolity and fine art. Furnishings, paintings, sculptures, objets d’art… which were now being delivered up “to the fire of the auction house.”

And so it begins, walls adorned with Warhol, Mondrian, Degas, Matisse, impressions compounded by footage of each of Saint-Laurent and Bergé in the company of Mick Jagger and Catherine Deneuve. The walls are burdened with memories – full, comprehensive and compacted – with notes from Maria Callas, images of dancers and of Jean Cocteau, letters and photos, photos, photos.

While edited to form a throughline to an inevitable cleansing by Christies, this is a love story.

Saint-Laurent and Bergé met during the time of Saint-Laurent’s first collection for Christian Dior, a time when (after Dior’s funeral) haute couture was declared “dead,” and a time when this 21-year-old shortsighted successor bore the burden of collection after collection of creativity.

Bergé shares that, at the time Saint Laurent designed his first Mondrian-inspired frock, he could not have imagined they’d ever own one of the Frenchman’s works, but, as he states so aptly succinctly, “One day a Mondrian came into our lives, followed by others” other artists, too. Vases by Jean Dunand, a sculpture by Brancusi, a Picasso, a Braque, a Leger, slowly but surely their Parisian rental property was overrun in what would become one of the world’s most significant private collections of fine art.

In their vacation property in Marrakech, Morocco also, Saint-Laurent’s style and taste in art informed the couple’s palatial Dar el Hanch property, a place that enabled them to entertain a nocturnal lifestyle away from prying eyes. Normandy, too, to which they traveled by helicopter, presented itself to them as a contrary haven at which the couple could escape and rejuvenate, where they could be bored and, to some extent, be reclusive.

“L’Amour Fou”’s revelations of this inner circle of friends, and the role each played, is a true insight into the life and minds of Saint-Laurent, a man not particularly protective of his perspective.

And so the procession follows of those who enabled Saint-Laurent to indulge and explore, who ensured his frenzied or depressed self still functioned, who were there. And Saint-Laurent’s own art and industry is celebrated as much as it is scrutinized.

The filmmakers comprehensively conquer a wealth of experiences and emotions within the broader context of the worlds of haute couture, French politics (including gay rights and political measures regarding AIDS) and, of course, fine art.

Rarely does a posthumous documentary of an artist approach the subject with such candor, and one can safely assume that everyone viewing this documentary will discover something significant, or learn something tangible.

“L’Amour Fou” is an exacting exhaustive exchange with one of the world’s most exemplary artists, as well as his relationship to things he loved, and we’re clearly better off for the insight.

For a piece-by-piece breakdown of the results of the Christie’s auction – see http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22294#action=refine&intSaleID=22294&sid=7df679be-20e9-49ad-bc36-0cefb2320704