~more on: L’AMOUR FOU . . .
from VANITY FAIR – JUNE 2011
photo: VANITY FAIR, June 2011
Yves Saint Laurent in his living room, Rue de Babylon, 1974. inset: Saint Laurent fitting a model, 1961.
below: Saint Laurent and his longtime companion and business partenr, Pierre Berger in 1983.
see: VANITYFAIR.COM
in an interesting little ‘HOT REELS’ article – published last JUNE 2011 – VANITY FAIR scribe A. M. HOLMES writes that not only is this film, ‘L’AMOUR FOU’ , “Pierre Thoretton’s directorial and documentary debut” but, more dramatically . . . “the two Pierres (filmmaker Pierre Thoretton and YSL partner PIERRE BERGE) were introduced by Thoretton’s former mother-in-law, actress CATHERINE DENEUVE, (!!) in the 90s.”
he goes on:
“Sometime later they began meeting for lunch every Thursday to talk about life. The portrait that emerged from their conversations is an intimate, elegiac celebration of the two lives intertwined”.
elegaic, as in sorrowful, yes. celebration ? no.
“The film begins with Yves Saint Laurent’s announcement, amid popping flashbulbs, of his retirement, in 2002; from there it cuts to Berge’s eloquent observations six years later at Saint Laurent’s funeral . . . and follows Berge through the sale of hundreds of art objects the two men collected over the years.
Berge, who was always behind the scenes, comes across as almost regal in his stoicism, his philosophical determination to separate the objects from the man. ‘I show that — but I don’t believe a word of it,’ Thoretton says. ‘Despite what he says, it’s just not the way he is. Selling everything was part of the grieving process. The memories were too large to live with . . .’
In 2009, Christie’s oversaw the ‘Sale of the Century’ at the Grand Palais, in Paris — the auction of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge Collection, which netted in excess of $450 million.
Berge’s reaction to the film, Thoretton says, was profound. ‘He cried. He said Thank you. And he said he’d learned things about himself that he didn’t want to talk about — because they were things he didn’t like.'”
yeah, like maybe he should have let Yves smoke a little medicinal weed ?? !! or bike ride ?
or, give it all away – in Saint Laurent’s lifetime – and run a school for under-privileged kids ?
beats me. but, about that house in Morocco . . . .
and yeah, it was kind of obscene to see him so unhappy, surrounded by so much wealth. I mean some people are happy just with one plant blooming in their kitchen window. I think after awhile the essence maybe gets lost in the numbers.
maybe he should have come to New York and rocked the contemporary scene. what they were collecting was so fusty and staid, anyways. this seemed to be a collection entirely devoid of life. L’amour fou, crazy love ? looking more like suffocating love, to me.