This is a YSL bio pic and Pierre Niney starres as the legendary fashion designer who goes from a teenager designing dresses in his house in Algeria to becoming the creative director of Dior and branching out to starting his own multi million dollar label. Along the way he falls in love with his business partner Perrie Begey and does a lot of cocaine.
It goes through the important moments in his life, being appointed artistic director at Dior at age 21, falling in love, creating the mondrian inspired coloured block dress. Pierre Niney looks a lot like him, the nose, the lanky frame and the glasses. The clothes are great and actually on loan from Yves Saint Laurent and Pierres Begey’s foundation – they could only be used for a few hrs at a time. The movie is very safe and very tastefully done.
It’s a little whitewashed and doesn’t show a lot of the muck that actually formed part of his life like the cocaine and sleeping around with other people and back stabbing and betrayal. It doesn’t really show who this person was, Who was this guy , he suddenly becomes this young prodigy who makes it into the biggest couture house on earth, how, why, who did he know, how did that process work? He did put that cool white sash on the cocktail and dress and voila!
We don’t ever get an idea of what inspired him – we all know the results but what we all wanted to know is how he got there. We meet some of his musses but no interaction with them that shows what could have inspired him. I didn’t really understand him creatively or personally – he treats Pierre Bergey terribly and all Pierre Bergey does is protect him. Does YSL feel bad about running around with hot young men, doing a lot of coke and have a lots of anonymous gay sex with them.
The movie kind of ends pretty abruptly – good performances, pretty shallow, if you want to see dresses, then maybe worth a watch.