Couturier From a Bygone Era
The freedom Yves Saint Laurent enjoyed to focus on art
BY GARY M. KRAMER
“Celebration” is out
gay director Olivier
Meyrou’s beguiling
documentary
about the late Yves Saint Laurent
and his business partner and lover,
Pierre Bergé. The fi lm was shot
over three years, starting in 1998,
when Saint Laurent was the last
living original fashion house couturier.
It ends with him announcing
his retirement.
The fi lm, however, was almost
never released. Meyrou had a protracted,
15-year legal battle with
Bergé — who originally proposed
he make the fi lm. But Bergé never
signed a release for the use of his
image, and Meyrou sued.
With Bergé’s 2017 passing, “Celebration”
is now hitting theaters.
In contrast to the recent biopics
“Yves Saint Laurent” and “Saint
Laurent,” or the documentary
“L’Amour Fou,” “Celebration” provides
a different, arguably more revealing
portrait of the late fashion
icon and his partner. An observational
documentary, it shows Saint
Laurent at work and Bergé controlling
things behind the scenes.
While there are some fabulous
fashions on display, the best moments
are the unexpected ones,
such as Bergé remarking, “Probably
I have a part of that” when
Saint Laurent accepts a lifetime
achievement award.
Recalling Bergé’s outreach to
him about making the documentary,
Meyrou, via WhatsApp, said,
“I knew nothing about fashion. But
I couldn’t refuse it. They are icons
and big fi gures in the gay community.
I entered the house of couture
at the end of the 20th century, but
it looked early-20th or late-19th
century the way they were working.
It was like a French tradition,
already lost to history. I really felt
that I was in a different time. I
was amazed because Yves Saint
Laurent was a legend, a myth in
French history, but he was a common
fi gure at work.”
Meyrou considered Saint Laurent’s
iconic status in making a
Pierre Bergé stands behind Yves Saint Laurent as the designer looks over his new collection, in Olivier
Meyrou’s documentary “Celebration,” which opens at the Film Forum on October 2.
deliberate decision about how to
present him in “Celebration.”
“When I was shooting, the closer
I came to Yves Saint Laurent the
more I could feel vibrations and
this weird energy,” he explained.
“He was completely by himself —
there but not there. I got the idea
of fi lming the workers and Berge
in color and Yves Saint Laurent in
black and white to give him a different
status. He was an historical
fi gure.”
The documentary chronicles
Saint Laurent completing his last
collection — though Meyrou didn’t
know specifi cally that the designer
was about to retire. The director focused
on what he described as the
“specifi cs” of Saint Laurent’s story,
not on the fashion.
“Saint Laurent was exhausted
after 40 years of creation,” Meyrou
said. “For me, it was the story of
the ending of the designer — a bit
like ‘Phantom Thread.’ I wanted to
show creation as a cost on the artist.
No one knew he would stop, but
everyone knew it was the end. They
wanted it to continue and survive
as long as possible. The house was
like a family. That was what I was
observing, and why I didn’t want
to do a ‘fashion movie.’ That story
was so specifi c, unusual, and extreme
that this is what I wanted to
show.”
The director was pleased by the
latitude he enjoyed during fi lming.
“They were great because they
COURTESY OF KIMSTIM
COURTESY OF KIMSTIM
Designer Yves Saint Laurent.
never said, ‘You are too close to
Yves Saint Laurent,’ or ‘He’s too
fragile,’” Meyrou said. “I h ad total
freedom, and that is so rare. This
is the fi lm I had to do.”
A shot of Bergé standing behind
Saint Laurent as he is looking at
the designs in a collection underscores
the infl uence the businessman
had behind the scenes.
“They were a gay couple who had
been together more than 40 years,”
Meyrou observed. “There are ups
and downs. Bergé was really overprotective
of Saint Laurent, and
Bergé was the exterior of their
world. Saint Laurent, when I met
with him, was by himself at the
studio or the apartment. He had
retired from the active world. They
FILM
were yin and yang — one eagle
with two heads.”
He added, “Some people think
‘Celebration’ is a good guy/ bad
guy relationship, but it’s not that
at all. It’s a story of love. Love is not
always easy, and their child was
the house of couture. All their energy
went to the house. It was the
cement.”
Saint Laurent’s remove from
business considerations is something
Meyrou felt distinguished his
career from that of today’s fashion
designers.
“He’s an icon from a different
world,” the director said. “A fi lm
on fashion today, you can’t forget
about the business side, but with
Yves Saint Laurent the business
side was beyond the artist. It was
the art of Saint Laurent. He was
like a painter of the 20th century
with his atelier. It’s about creation
and freedom. There is also a sense
of tragedy. His story is tragic. He
wanted to make dresses when he
was six years old. He’s gay and
feminine and had to struggle to
achieve his dream. He created one
of the biggest houses of couture
in the world. It’s a very powerful
story.”
Despite the bitterness he felt
while the fi lm’s release was blocked,
Meyrou said he screened the documentary
for Bergé before his death
and that Bergé “loved it.”
“I don’t know if I would have released
the fi lm without Bergé seeing
it,” the director said. “It’s intrusive
to do a fi lm on someone’s life.
For 15 years, it has been extremely
diffi cult for me to have the feeling
that Bergé was rejecting the fi lm.
The fi lm was a labor of love. When
he saw the fi lm fi nally, it settled
things and he realized that I didn’t
harm them.”
Meyrou added, “There’s no revenge.
When I started the fi lm’s
promotion, I had anger still but now
with time going by and Berge being
dead I see things more calmly.”
CELEBRATION | Directed by Olivier
Meyrou | KimStim | Opens Oct. 2
| Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. |
fi lmforum.org
GayCityNews.com | September 26 - October 9, 2019 27
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