Yves Saint Laurent (2014)

Here is a French biographical drama that approaches its subject with the reverence of a museum docent unlocking a climate-controlled vitrine. Jalil Lespert's film traces Yves Saint Laurent from his 1958 appointment at Dior through the founding of his own house, and it does so with real couture, real locations, and the cooperation of Pierre Bergé himself. The garments are authentic. The pen is authentic. The structure, alas, is a standard rise-and-fall arc that Variety accurately called by-the-numbers. We watch a genius unravel in nice rooms.

The emotional architecture rests on the relationship between Saint Laurent and Bergé, and the film treats that partnership as the love story it was, without apology or coyness. This is the film's genuine cultural contribution, and it is a substantial one. Elsewhere the picture is content to observe rather than instruct. Saint Laurent's manic depression is rendered as the familiar tortured-artist affliction, all trembling hands and abrupt withdrawals, offered as texture instead of diagnosis. The fashion world around him is presented as a glittering, unexamined hierarchy in which women function as muses and mannequins and wealth functions as proof of genius. No lectures arrive about any of this. The film has no thesis to press upon us.

The result is a curious specimen: a film whose progressive content is entirely inherited from the facts of its subject's life, not imposed by its makers. It neither challenges the beauty standards of its milieu nor interrogates the economics of luxury. It simply displays them, beautifully lit. Pierre Niney won a César for his performance, and the award is deserved. The film around him remains a well-upholstered piece of conventional biography, respectful to a fault, and about as confrontational as a perfume advertisement.