Filmed over the course of three years, this portrait of fashion colossus Yves Saint Laurent’s final show was suppressed right after its first and only public screening at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival. The film was blocked by YSL’s business (and on-and-off romantic) partner Pierre Bergé, who objected to the couturier’s portrayal as frail and not quite all there, and to his own depiction of being the behind the scenes mastermind. (The dynamic between the two is said to have inspired Paul Thomas Anderson’s depiction of Daniel Day-Lewis and Lesley Manville’s characters in Phantom Thread.) Fortunately, Bergé relented in 2015 (he died in 2017), and thus Celebration is finally available. Director Olivier Meyrou’s film presents an opulent and immersive behind-the-scenes look at haute couture designer Yves Saint Laurent’s final show and is a priceless addition to our understanding of the man, the myth, la marque, that is Yves Saint Laurent.

Description courtesy of KimStim.

—

“Most fashion documentaries are pretty sycophantic. Not this one.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“Though a document of an ostensible celebration, Celebration is never celebratory, and maybe that’s the point.” – Sherilyn Connelly, SF Weekly

“Demystifies its subject, portraying saint-Laurent as a fragile monarch tenuously reigning over a tradition-bound kingdom that is beginning to look as archaic as Versailles.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International