Saint Laurent Summer of '21
Following the Cannes debut of Noe’s “Lux Aeterna”, a split screen metafiction about actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Béatrice Dalle playing themselves making a film about witchcraft, Vaccarello tapped Noe to direct the YSL short. When viewing the work, one can understand why. While there are no overt references to anything wicked, a sinister horror lies constantly just beyond the frame. Something is happening here, and we don’t know what it is. But the feeling is unshakeable.
No stranger to a good electronic dance track, Noe uses the propulsive rhythm of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, reinterpreted by SebastiAn, as a trance that pulls us into the velvet red interior of some abandoned manor. Inside, the talent wearing Vacarello’s new collection move with a purpose unknown to us, at the behest of Rampling’s mysterious and haunted priestess; here, Noe blurs the body language of a modern runway model with that of someone under a spell. The ultimate effect is, as stated in YSL’s press release, a “Neo Belle de Jour, in an atmosphere reminiscent of the first Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutiques of the Sixties.”
Watch the full film below.
