REVIEW: Saint Laurent

In this gorgeous, French-language film about the life of iconic fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, every frame drips with languid elegance as crushingly handsome Gaspard Ulliel (pictured, a dead ringer for the designer)

glides across work rooms, boardrooms and nightclubs with weary grace. The film is very French, exquisitely beautiful and as melancholy as its subject.

While YSL navigates a decadent world of fame, sex and drugs — isolated by his own eye for perfection — the film contrasts the beauty on display with its dark side, showing (in the icon’s own words) “not how he became Saint Laurent, but what it cost him to become Saint Laurent.” THE WORD: Focusing on 1967–1976, the film shows a legend at the height of his career but also hovering over an abyss; it ultimately paints him as a martyr not to fashion (which is passing) but style (which endures). COMING TO: Theaters

By Jonathan Roche