L'amour fou

"L'Amour Fou" is a documentary narrated by Yves Saint Laurent's romantic and business partner Pierre Berge about the life they shared for 50 years, focusing naturally on Saint Laurent's work but perhaps more surprisingly on the vast collection of paintings, sculptures and objects d'art that they amassed over their years together and, of course, on the love they had for each other. Theirs was a marriage of sorts, perhaps not made in heaven, but enduring and certainly passionate, a testament not just to the stability of gay relationships but of the ability to survive a life lived almost entirely in the spotlight, (though, of course, there were as many guns as roses in the relationship).

It's very simply made, (the director is Pierre Thoretton), with no narration other than Berge's and a few other talking heads from Saint Laurent's life. We are never nudged in any direction but left to make up our own minds. If the film has a fault it's that it never settles on any one point of view and in the end leaves us feeling rather chilly.