Can't get enough of YSL? Try Olivier Meyrou's Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé doc, CELEBRATION

In a very real sense, it is unfair to call CELEBRATION -- the documentary from filmmaker Olivier Meyrou (shown below) -- the most recent of all the several film about Yves Saint Laurent (or YSL), the famous fashion designer who died in 2008. Though it only hit USA theaters last fall, it was actually made back in 2007 and has spent the remaining dozen years in movie limbo because, from what I can ascertain, although it was commissioned by Saint Laurent's lover and business partner, Pierre Bergé, M. Bergé then decided it was too revealing and refused to allow it to be shown.

Bergé is now dead, and so the film, so to speak, has finally come alive.

The ironic joke here is that Celebration is revealing, all right, but almost exclusively about the character -- pompous, controlling, power-hungry and sleazy -- of Bergé himself. We learn next to nothing about Yves Saint Laurent (show below), except that he is clearly very ill and barely able to function any longer.

Because M. Meyrou, with his fly-on-the-wall camerawork and never-intrusive presence, covers only the behind-the-scenes (along with some upfront) preparations for YSL's final show, and a bit of the show itself, as well as some sort of awards ceremony for this famous designer, we get little historical perspective and no narration whatsoever.

Instead we rely quite a bit on the musings of some of the older workers for YSL, who babble on amusingly about everything from the layout of their former quarters, which dresses were sewn by whom, and -- when a parade of models shows off YSL's eclectic-but-not-terribly-creative gowns in a stadium-like setting -- exclaim in awe: "The whole world will see this! This is France!" Oh, please: Let's hope not.

Some of the film is devoted to an interview between a fashion reporter and YSL (above). Her questions, however, are not particularly probing, nor are his answers revealing of much we either don't know or could not quickly figure out for ourselves. Her praise for the designer, along with that of just about everyone else we see and hear in the movie, is effusive in its use of superlatives. If we had a nickle for every time someone opens his/her mouth with another hype -- "Magnificent!" "Brilliant!" "Wonderful!" "Incredible!" -- we might becomes millionaires. (I exaggerate, but you get the point.)

Plus, we have already seen several movies -- both narrative and documentary -- about YLS and Bergé to perhaps not need very much more added to our overflowing plate: a doc made for French TV titled Yves Saint Laurent: 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris, the not uninteresting 2011 doc called L' Amour Fou, the paint-by-numbers and cliche-ridden tripe of Yves Saint Laurent from 2014, and Bertrand Bonello's fantasia on fashion, fame, celebrity and culture Saint Laurent (also from 2014 and certainly the best of the bunch).

What does Celebration add to all this? Not much, I'm afraid. Although the little dog of YSL and Bergé provides some fun here, this tiresome movie itself is mostly a dog -- unless of course you're a huge fashion aficionado and/or can't get enough of YSL.

From 1091 and running just 74 minutes, Celebration becomes available this coming Tuesday, March 31, via digital and VOD -- for purchase and rental.

This year's biggest waste of time so far: the Lespert/Niney/Gallienne YVES SAINT LAURENT

For anyone who found the 2010 documentary L'amour fou -- about Yves Saint Laurent and his business partner/lover Pierre Bergér -- lovely to look at if a little weak in the characterization department, hold on to your hat. The new and much-marketed narrative movie about the pair, titled simply YVES SAINT LAURENT, offers even less. In every department. You might imagine that, within the 106-minute running time, some revealing specifics regarding character might surface. Sure, YSL was a notoriously private person, but the whole point of a narrative version, one would imagine, is to delve more deeply and then show us the man beneath the glamour and gowns. Good luck. Not only is the movie tiresome and repetitive, but the people are mostly boring.

I am particularly unmoored by how truly awful this movie is because one of the two lead actors and the film's director are favorites of mine, from whom I expect a lot. And while Pierre Niney, shown below, who plays YSL, does as much as he can with the far-too-constrained script, the film's director and co-writer Jalil Lespert, at right, whom I have long admired as an actor, has not gone one inch beyond the expected and the clichéd as a filmmaker. What in the world were they thinking?

Let's start with the really lousy fake nose they've given poor M. Niney. It's so noticeable, particularly because it does not move like a real nose. Then let's tackle how the filmmakers decided to show his character: by making it clear that YSL was a workhorse who cared most about his dresses -- and repeating this fact over and over again.

YSL's relationship with his family is likewise made one-note, mostly a mom issue (played by Marianne Basler, above), sans any relevant details. The fact that the man is socially somewhat retarded and is finally brought out into the world via drugs and sex (which make it easier for him to relax and relate) is also handed to us on a platter -- which we're fed from once too often.

About M. Bergér (played by Guillaume Gallienne, above, left, who was so much more interesting in his awarding-winning Me, Myself and Mum) we learn next to nothing, other than he was evidently bi-sexual. We see little of the amazing possessions the two managed to collect over their lives together (see the doc version for that). There's a smattering of business talk now and then, but none of it exactly entices.

The fashions, such as they are, roll by us with regularity and not much else. You'll learn much more about these from the documentary version, as well. In any case, there's more drama in the pleat of an YSL skirt than in the entire movie, the height of which arrives when one character slaps another in the face. Wow!

Perhaps the filmmaking team wanted only to stick with the facts as known -- generally a mistake where a narrative film is concerned because part of the point of this format is the opportunity to extrapolate and invent. (YSL's leading model/muse -- for awhile, at least -- is played by the glamorous Charlotte Le Bon, shown above and below).

As the movie drags on, you can't quite bring yourself to believe that this is all there is. Surely there will be something more? Then -- poof! -- it's over and the end credits are rolling. And we're rolling our eyes.

So unendingly tiresome and boring are these people and their "scene" that one is almost tempted to suggest that M. Lespert has given us something utterly subversive here: Showing up the fashion world -- together with its kings, queens and clothes -- for the empty, worthless shell game that it is.

Yves Saint Laurent, from The Weinstein Company, opens at Film Forum (a rather strange venue for a stinker like this) on Wednesday, June 25, for a two-week run. Elsewhere? Surely, yes. But don't expect much help from the TWC's current web page on the film....

Pierre Thoretton's Yves Saint Laurent doc L'AMOUR FOU opens: Why, Yves--you dog!

What a strange little documentary is L'AMOUR FOU (crazy love in Eng-lish), as it takes us ever-so-slowly up to the front door of the life of late and eminent fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent -- and then leaves us there, waiting to get in. We definitely move ahead into the fashions and interiors that comprised YSL's work and home(s). But as for getting to know the men who lived and worked there -- Yves and his lover and business partner Pierre Bergér -- we learn little more about who they are/were by the end of this movie than we knew when we started.

Granted, the late YSL was a very private person, as the film makes clear. So, probably, is the still-with-us M.Bergér. Consequently, instead of entering the hearts and minds of the two, the film, co-written (with Eve Guillon) and directed by Pierre Thoretton (shown at right), enters their homes (in Paris and Morocco) and their workplace (the studio, the runways and various media events). While the episodes devoted to fashion and the workplace are not particularly new or exciting (from what the movie offers, YSL designs do not look likely to stand the test of time), what we see of the homes -- interiors and exteriors in Marrakech (below), interiors in Paris -- are something else.

No interior shots (the best thing about the movie) are provided among the stills we could find, so you will have to see the film to appreciate the very high level of taste on display. These interiors -- full of objets d'art, carpets, sofas, and more -- that work both indivi-dually and as a collection are among the most beautiful I have ever seen. (The entire collection was sold at auction after YSL's demise.)

The designer's fashion sense, however, so far as concerns beautifying or dignifying women, leaves a lot to be desired: far too much crass over class. From his first and much raved-about "Trapeze" collection for the House of Dior (under whom YSL first came into recognition), though "new" at the time, now looks like nothing so much as a clever means of disguising pregnancy. A ludi-crous bridal collection is given much play here, as is YSL's far smarter, svelte styles based on the designs of Piet Mondrian.

Said to be pathologically shy, YSL certainly seemed to get over that affliction. (That's a shot of Yves and Pierre, above.) His partying days -- surprise!-- offer the usual drugs and alcohol, separation and reconciliation, then depression and withdrawal from public life. It's all here but in little detail or specifics. At one point we're treated to a kind of home movie that Yves and Pierre put together, in which we learn, among other things, that Yves (shown below, kaftan-clad in his Marrakech digs) prefers his male bodies very hairy.

Thoretton's film begins with a speech YSL gave upon his retirement from fashion, followed by another given by Bergér, upon his lover/partner's death. These are moving and filled with some surprising specifics, and nothing that follows even begins to top them -- except some of those visuals. I'd see the film again  for its interiors alone, but I came away thinking, "What an empty life!"  It may not have been, but the movie makes it appear so. In the end, this seems less like L'amour fou than L'amour fou d'argent.

The documentary, from Sundance Selects, opens Friday, May 13, at IFC Center. Look for it on VOD, as well, come May 25.