20
Apr/11

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: L’AMOUR FOU

20
Apr/11

Yves Saint Laurent is seen through the eyes of longtime partner Pierre Bergé in L’AMOUR FOU

L’AMOUR FOU (Pierre Thoretton, 2010)
Tuesday, April 26, SVA Theater, 9:00
Thursday, April 28, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 2:30
Friday, April 29, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 9:45
www.tribecafilm.com
www.ifcfilms.com

Previously profiled in such documentaries as 2002’s Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times and Yves Saint Laurent 5 Avenue Marceau 751116 Paris, Algerian-born French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent is seen from a very different perspective in L’Amour Fou (not to be confused with Jacques Rivette’s 1969 four-hour-plus tale of a marriage falling apart). On June 1, 2008, the iconic figure died of brain cancer at the age of seventy-one; the following February, the vast art collection Saint Laurent amassed with his longtime life and business partner, Pierre Bergé, was sold at a Christie’s auction. Director Pierre Thoretton tells Saint Laurent’s story chronologically as Bergé shares intimate details of their relationship while showing off the impressive soon-to-be-sold objets d’art displayed in their homes in Paris, Normandy, and Marrakech. A strong, direct man, Bergé admits to not being nostalgic as he relates his life with Saint Laurent, from Yves’s days as the successor to the House of Dior to the development of his own fashion empire, which made a name for itself with, among other things, his famed prêt-à-porter line and colorful Piet Mondrian dresses. Thoretton mixes in news footage, archival and family photographs, runway clips, and brief interviews with two of Saint Laurent’s muses, models Betty Catroux and Loulou de la Falaise, in addition to former French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, to draw an intimate portrait of the designer, but it’s most fascinating to watch Bergé as he talks about his friend and lover. “I know that tomorrow all of this will be gone,” he says about the art collection, but he could just as easily have been referring to Saint Laurent himself. “Which means what? A part of my soul, a part of my life.”