This ambiguous and slightly tentative line comes from French New Wave director Claude Lelouch's classic A Man and a Woman. This film not only endows a wealth of freedom and space for interpretation in the narrative plot, but also inspires countless generations of artistic creation in the past half century.
On the eve of Chanel's Fall/Winter 2024 ready-to-wear show, photographers Inez & Vinoodh teamed up with Oscar-winning actors Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt, supermodel Rianne Van Rompaey, In a short film, the classic scene of "A Man and a Woman" is recreated together, when "Do you have any vacancies in the hotel?" Cruz interprets the lines again, and we can witness the immortal charm of the classic in the changing trend.
The most representative cultural movement of the 1960s is the New Wave of French cinema. With low-cost and anti-traditional shooting and visual expression techniques, a group of local young directors draw on Italian neorealism and classical Hollywood-style, bringing independent films, which could only be wandering outside the mainstream, into a new spring. It is against this background that Claude Lelouch's 1966 film A Man and a Woman, one of the most important names in French New Wave cinema, became a classic of the genre.
According to legend, the background of the film originated from a trip Lelouch made to Duviere. One morning, while he was walking on the beach in Duviere, a young woman playing with her children nearby caught his attention, and the whole narrative of the film was extended. However, the plot is not as ideal and beautiful as Lelouch sees it. The film tells the story of two widowed single men and women who, as the title directly states, meet by chance while caring for their respective children in Duviere, and then form a romantic but restrained, rational and emotional bond.
"Instead of telling the story in a conventional, logical way, it's a cross between the male and female notions of time, and we're constantly intruding into the characters' past and future. We keep the past in mind in order to understand what will happen now and in the future." Looking back on the intense, cramped creation, Lelouch recalls that the team shot the film in just three weeks, using black and white to save money on the film's interior scenes, and then switching to color when he moved outside. Because of the cost, the film's lead actress, Anouk Aimee, had to wear her own clothes and accessories, including a Chanel handbag that she used to wear in everyday life.
As Aimee's Anne Gauthier carries the long metal chain bag through various scenes in the film, it appears under car windscreens, in the beautiful view of the Duviere Sea, and on the dinner table in the film's classic final sequence, When the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant asked the waiter the ambiguous and slightly tentative "Is there any room available?" The focus of the film is on the bag, Lelouch explains: "We shot in a natural environment. Actors in their own costumes... This is Anouk Aimee's own handbag. She carries it everywhere. It was such a good fit with her ethos that we ended up keeping it in the film."
"A Man and a Woman" immediately received a huge response, not only won the 1966 Cannes Film Festival Palme d 'Or, but also the following year at the Academy Awards won the best foreign language film and best original screenplay two awards. It can be said that the inspiration and creative passion found in Douvier made it a veritable blessing for Lelouch, as well as for Gabrielle Chanel, who opened her first personal clothing store here.
In Duviere at the beginning of the 20th century, Ms. Chanel drew inspiration from the popular avant-garde sports culture, and created more comfortable and casual swimsuits and beach wear for women with Jersey elastic material, which triggered the change of female dress trend and led the brand to the track of rapid development. In the 1960s, when the New Wave movement swept the world, Ms. Chanel also made contributions to the stylization of movies with creativity.
By then in her 70s, her modern designs were so popular with New Wave filmmakers that actress Jeanne Moreau would wear her dresses in Vadim's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Define Selig chose her work for Last Year at Marienbad, and Truffaut, when he was filming Stealing a Kiss, I'll send Selig down to Cambon Street to pick up clothes.
If Mademoiselle Chanel's fashion opened up an oasis of style for New Wave cinema during the New Wave era, then today, it has been shot by photographer Inez & Vinoodh, Oscar-winning actors Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt, As well as supermodel Rianne Van Rompaey's re-interpretation of the classic bridge of "A Man and a Woman", it inherits and continues the creative concept of Gabrielle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld, sublimating the encounter between film and fashion into a deep artistic connection.
As an advertising film for Chanel's classic handbag, the lines and shots of the original film of "A Man and a Woman" are almost completely preserved, and the "chabadabada" created by musician Francis Lai for the original is also set off a blend of straitness and excitement under the new black and white tone.
What is more valuable is that the original director Lelouch also appeared on the scene of this shooting, personally witnessed the classic reproduction of Cruz and Pitt, "When I learned that Chanel is going to remake this film, I was very excited. If I were to remake the film today with Pitt and Cruz in it, I would do what I did to Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant and ask them not to be actors but to be Un homme et une femme (a man and a woman)."
For Inez & Vinoodh, the cinematographers who directed the film, they continued the idea of Lelouch while taking a more pioneering twist, "The original film is about loss, love and choosing to continue to move forward for love. We decided to focus on attraction and love and play out that feeling by taking the restaurant scene but switching characters and erasing the backstory."
The so-called role transformation, on the one hand, reflected in the change of the restaurant waiter from the original waiter to the waitress played by supermodel Rianne Van Rompaey, on the other hand, it is around the classic sentence "Is there any room in the hotel?" Expand. In this commercial film, this line is not spoken by Pitt, who plays the male lead, but Cruz, which magnifies the initiative of the female role in this relationship.
"It was clear they weren't interested in the food and just wanted to go to the room. But it was the complicity between these two women - a central theme in all of our work for Chanel - that drove Cruz's decision to make the first move...... The food part of the dialogue, 'Is there any room available at the hotel?' is in stark contrast to the intimacy shown in the film footage, and speaks of the evolving tension between the characters. The handbag shows the same idea in it, it's there, but no one mentions it." Inez & Vinoodh explains.
For more than a minute, the dialogue between the actors, the tension between the expressions and the scenes show a vague emotional confusion, and the Chanel handbag between the male and female characters acts as a microcosm of courage and desire. As an extension of the woman's inner desire, it is taken out of the center of the picture, but also ensures the balance of power on both sides of the perspective. The soft texture of quilted leather, the turn of the lock and the metallic luster of the chain echo the delicate and subtle expression details and emotions of the actors in the process of quick cutting and switching of the camera.
Inez & Vinoodh said, "Penelope Cruz and Brad Pitt are a perfect match in every way. There is a great mutual respect and connection between them. I'm happy to see them working so well together."
Although Penelope Cruz and Brad Pitt met on the set of director Ridley Scott's "Where we Stand," this is the first time the two have worked together on screen. Cruz described the collaboration as follows: "We ran into each other a few times over the years, but I've always admired his work, he's very approachable, friendly, and very funny. Therefore, I am very happy to cooperate with him. I think he is the perfect person to play the role of Jean-Louis Trintignant. I mean, you have to be cool and funny, and he's such an amazing actor."
The day before filming, Cruz was told that Lelouch would be on set. "I admire his work so much," he said. "I always dreamed that one day I would be able to play this character and use her look in this film as a reference." From the first time he saw the film, Cruz was fascinated by the relationship it was about, "Lelouch is very smart and his script is clever. Even a happy relationship is the most complicated thing in the world. You could see the excitement mixed with fear in the eyes of the two characters, and that was really fascinating to me."
Although the shooting cycle and short film length were limited, the performance also gave her a sense of why the film is called a classic, "I only later learned how difficult it was for them to make this film on an extremely low budget." I think there's only 10 or 15 people in the crew.
You can only do a work like this if you have his talent. I think the film is a very modern film for its time. At the same time, how Claude deals with this love story is also very profound. It not only has rich visual effects, but also has many layers. It's a great movie from start to finish."
"Some young people are going to find this movie one day and they're going to say, 'Oh my God, this is so cool, so modern.'" As Cruz commented on the original, the re-interpretation of "A Man and a Woman" makes the entire production staff and audience feel the immortal charm of this legendary work. Also like Chanel's classic handbag series of continuous inheritance and renewal, with the attitude of film frame by frame, polished out the most impeccable products.
In an interview with VOGUE, Cruz recalled her first experience of the Chanel team working together, "It was in 1999 when I met Elsa Heizmann and Karl, and many others who still work for Chanel today, who always made me feel like part of the Chanel family." They respect everyone in every department...... I always like to see what they're doing in the studio before the show. Nobody cares about the hours they work, and if there's something they don't think is perfect, they won't sleep until they're satisfied."
This seems to explain why Chanel's classic handbag is still enduring. From February 1955, Gabrielle Chanel launched her 2.55 handbag, which changed women's living habits through iconic design and liberated women's hands with practical design, to the 1980s, Karl Lagerfeld based on the original 2.55 handbag. The metal double C buckle is placed on the mouth cover of the handbag, and the innovative interpretation of the 11.12 handbag has become a new classic, and now, under the creative leadership of Virginie via, Chanel's classic handbag has integrated more new materials, highlighting the modern and soft atmosphere, and at the same time, it is combined with more simple and casual daily modeling. It fits the actual experience of women's life and work.
The creative innovation around the classic handbag has always continued, but the delicate design of solemn and elegant, the low-key and luxurious finishing traces, and the unique and delicate production process are the eternal core of Chanel's classic handbag, and just as the essence of the film as the seventh art is reflected, no matter how The Times change, the hand-down works that can withstand scrutiny will cross the boundary of time and space. Convey the timeless brilliance of style.
