See Gaspar Noé’s New Film for Saint Laurent, Starring Charlotte Rampling

Saint Laurent has revealed its second film by the notorious French-Argentinian director Gaspar Noé. Best known for his 2015 film Love – which has become infamous for its lengthy scenes of unsimulated sex – Noé’s first project for the Parisian house was the heady 2019 “film-essay” Lux Æterna, featuring on-sceen legends Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg. This time, arthouse icon Charlotte Rampling takes the lead in a film which captures Anthony Vaccarello’s sultry, 60s-inspired Spring/Summer 2021 collection.

In the seven-minute feature, Noé imagines a supernatural chateau in which Rampling is the high sorceress of a coven of Saint Laurent models – which include the likes of Mica Arganaraz, Sora Choi, and AnOther cover star Anok Yai. In the decadent yet unsettling mansion, Rampling’s coterie of followers lounge in crimson love seats, play chess and glide around the house’s sensual, red rooms as SebastiAn’s hypnotic remastering of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love builds in intensity. Drawing from Belle de Jour and Italian horror films of the 1970s, the film captures something in-between “terror and pleasure“, according to Saint Laurent.

Noe’s Summer of ’21 project for Saint Laurent celebrates Anthony Vaccarello’s latest collection, which was unveiled last month via conversely soothing film – revealed in lieu of a traditional catwalk show – which saw models swathe through a vast, pristine desert. Stripped-back and feminine, the collection captures a particular sort of French glamour natural to the house, bringing together dark, sheer fabrics, sensual feathers and 60s-inflected silhouettes. “I wanted to focus on the essence of things,” Vaccarello said of the collection at the time. “I didn’t want anything bleak or heavy … The clothes are also softer, [and] the spirit of the collection is more gentle.”

Watch the film below.