Charlotte Rampling stars as a mysterious entertainer in a new film for fashion house Saint Laurent.
The eight-minute video titled “Summer of ‘21,” commissioned by Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello and directed by Gaspar Noé, begins with a woman running and screaming in terror through a forest. As an instrumental cover of Donna Summer’s disco hit “I Feel Love” by Sebastian plays, she enters a house, where models are seen walking around and lounging in several different rooms that are painted red and bathed in moody lighting.
Rampling sits in dressing room wearing a printed tunic with black feathers. She takes a last look at herself in a mirror before leaving and sauntering through a red hallway as the models head into a crimson and gold theater. The film ends with the models applauding Rampling as she does a slight shimmy while standing on stage in a bed of rose petals.
The atmosphere is “reminiscent of the first Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutiques of the Sixties,” reads a press release about the film .
It adds, “A world bathed by a red, hazy, velvety light, reminiscent of the glory years of giallo or the interiors of Saint Laurent shops from another era. A familiar and timeless feeling. Dreaminess and tension, decadence and danger, like a false torpor. The unsettling strangeness of those girls gravitating around Charlotte Rampling, the mysterious and haunted priestess.”
Noé’s first short film for Saint Laurent, “Lux Æterna,” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019. Rampling will be seen in 2021 in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic “Dune” playing Gaius Helen Mohiam alongside stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.
Vaccarello debuted Saint Laurent’s full summer 2021 collection earlier this month in a 10-minute film presentation featuring models walking in the middle of a desert.