David Lynch & Marion Cotillard Get Blue For Dior | Clothes on Film
David Lynch has premiered his sixteen minute commercial for Lady Dior and it is every bit as ‘Lynch’ as you might expect.
Apparently David Lynch was allowed to do pretty much what he liked when creating this mini-movie providing it featured Old Shanghai, the Oriental Pearl Tower (incidentally Lynch did not know what this was beforehand) and, of course, the swish Lady Dior bag itself. Inspiration came from his own short poem.
The rich and moody film entitled Lady Blue Shanghai is third in the Lady Dior advertising series, or chapter, or saga – or is it art? What’s obvious is that you do not hire David Lynch and give him creative carte blanche solely to shift handbags.
There is some definite artistic expression on display and Lynch even composed the music along with Dean Hurley whom he worked with on Inland Empire (2006). Regardless of how far up the cynicism-o-meter Dior are pushing things (they even had a ‘countdown’ to the ad on their website), there is no denying the sixteen minutes drift, if not exactly fly by.
Donna Karan ran a similar campaign around Christmas called Four Play. Their commercial featuring Christina Ricci was more conventional in style and more ‘product’ based than Lynch’s, though arguably no less pleasing because of it. The ad, however, was directed by Sting’s son Jake Sumner who does not carry anywhere near the same artistic weight as David Lynch. This is why Lady Dior is getting so much press; it is his name more than anything else.
Creative director at Dior, John Galliano, claims Lynch was chosen because he brought “the style, the mystery, the suspense”. Watch the long-form Lady Blue Shanghai film and draw your own conclusions. For our money it is strikingly shot by Steven Klein, and the use of Shanghai in the title was thankfully not Lynch being ironic. Marion Cotillard, as ever, is devastatingly appealing.
Source: FT.com
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