This is part three in Dior’s series of art-film commercials featuring auteur directors and big budgets and knock-out french actress Marion Cotillard (The first one was done by La Vie En Rose director Olivier Dahan and we posted it way back in May 2009 and part two appeared in January, 2010, directed by music video and film director (Spun) Jonas Akerlund.)
Part three is vintage David Lynch: Strange lens angles, smoke and symbolic objects, red curtains (when you see the red curtains in a Lynch production, weird happenstance is about to occur) and that wonderful Angelo Badalamenti inspired score (written and performed by Lynch in this case). The cinematography is reminiscent of the Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle collaborations, yet a hard digital feel is present and it continues to convince (me, at least) in terms of Lynch’s mastery of hand-held digital.
The result is Lady Blue Shanghai, a 15 minute art house commercial that is wonderful. I am not sure if it will actually sell perfume, but if modern advertisement has the key goal to “evoke,” then they came to the right director who eats, sleeps and shits “evoke.” Watch it in a quiet dark room for the full effect.
The complete short film is tucked under the seat.
Be sure to check out “THE POEM” which I am assuming is also lynch directed, and features a similar (more interview-ish) vibe.
it’s at the Dior website, after the intro, click THE POEM.
http://www.ladydior.com/
Wow. This is pretty fantastic – and may have renewed my interest in Lynch. Inland Empire was a little much for me – definitely fascinating, but too convoluted and Lynchian for its own damn good. Plus, while I was on board with him going to digital, there were parts of it that looked so rough and, frankly, crappy-looking that it just took me out of the film (the scene with Grace Zabriskie and Laura Dern near the beginning is a good example).
But I just loved this short. The digital looks much smoother and more focused than Inland – perhaps something the Dior folks wanted to ensure for their campaign, but either way, it works beautifully. And the whole dreamscape feel of it was closer in tone to Mulholland Drive for me. Very nicely done.
Most of Inland empire was shot on consumer-grade digital video, this is most likely a big step up on the hard-ware side. Things have improved a lot since 2005 when he started shooting Inland Empire, so it is only natural for things to look a little better.
I don’t know if you caught Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, but it is shot digital, and unlike Michael Mann (or David Lynch), Scott is not trying to exploit digital for the sake of a new aesthetic, but nevertheless Robin Hood is a stunningly handsome film.
FYI, inland empire was shot on this: http://www.videomaker.com/article/8869/
A PD150! Wow, there were plenty of much better digital video cameras around in 2005, so it must have been a choice to keep it so raw. It is technically a professional camera though in it’s defense, but bottom end wedding/corporate video level.