Saint Laurent
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: May 8, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
17
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Boston GlobePeter KeoughMay 21, 2015
Bonello takes on the point of view of Saint Laurent himself, exposing a visionary world seen from within that is as strange and wonderful as that of a magnificently stitched garment turned inside out. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyJoe McGovernMay 7, 2015
Actor Ulliel, who’s been the face of both Chanel and Hannibal Lecter (in 2007’s Hannibal Rising), knows how to slither. His version of Yves is spoiled, insecure, cruel—and, in the movie’s ironic final shot, tickled to death that we still seem to care about him. Read full review
85
Film.comJordan HoffmanMay 20, 2014
Bonello's decision to show rather than tell keeps the audience on its toes. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 7, 2015
The film is a compulsively detailed swirl of moods and impressions, intent on capturing the contradictions of the man and his times. Observations of Saint Laurent at work and in love give way to panoramic, intricate surveys of the world of commerce and culture in which he suffered and flourished. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMay 21, 2015
Dreamy and impressionistic, full of debauchery, drugs, disco, and dazzling couture, Saint Laurent is a biopic that picks its moments, leaving backstory behind. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayMay 14, 2015
A film that manages to avoid the dreary, Wikipediaesque literalism that plagues so many biopics while obliquely evoking the man and his era with textures, atmosphere, mood and tone. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMay 6, 2015
Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello’s anti-biopic on the fashion icon, is overlong and opaque, even boring in spots, but it contains long passages of real poetry. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSusan WloszczynaMay 8, 2015
Ultimately hollow as director Bertrand Bonello keeps his subject somewhat emotionally at bay, the movie is also at times quite addictive — much like Opium, the controversial name of Saint Laurent’s famous scent. As a diversion, it isn’t exactly good for you but it does provide entertainment. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMay 7, 2015
There's good cause to shake the biopic form out of its exhaustively linear, birth-to-death rut, and Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent — starring Gaspard Ulliel as the storied French designer — valiantly tries. Read full review
60
Time OutDave CalhounMay 5, 2015
Unlike the clothes, though, the film is shapeless, running at its subject from all directions but never quite reaching its core. Read full review
60
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 25, 2014
The upside for Saint Laurent’s admirers is that Bonello’s film reflects more of the designer’s tortured creative drive in its dark onyx surfaces; it’s the slightly deranged auteur portrait that a fellow artist and iconoclast deserves. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 25, 2014
The trajectory of success and excess followed by last act redemption is familiar to the point of parody, and the ploys with time come over as gimmicky attempt to inject an element of surprise into the otherwise predictable narrative. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJun 11, 2015
Saint Laurent was a truly mythic figure. It’s a shame that Bonello’s film doesn’t do him justice. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianMarc MohanJun 5, 2015
A recent article in Film Comment magazine praised Saint Laurent for avoiding "banal psychologizing," but Bonello avoids any insight into his subject's state of mind, banal or not. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMay 28, 2015
A flamboyant but hollow exercise in glitz and pizzazz. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 6, 2015
Saint Laurent plays like the most inside-baseball fashion film ever, too many random “highlights,” too few moments of inspiration. Read full review
50
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekMay 5, 2015
It's rare to see process — the making of anything — dealt with as clearly and poetically as it is in Saint Laurent. It's too bad the movie feels like a confusing, misshapen muslin. Read full review
50
The DissolveMike D'AngeloMay 5, 2015
Superficiality reigns here. Arguably, that should dominate a movie about a fashion designer. But fashion shows run 10-20 minutes, not two and a half hours. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundOct 1, 2014
No matter how much Bertrand Bonello varies his split screens, triptychs, and geometric screen divisions, he forgets that one of the most fashionable virtues is knowing when to leave. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijMay 25, 2014
The screenplay... seems to generally lack a throughline or focus, coasting from party scenes full of drugs and alcohol to work-related drama but rarely managing to get inside the head of the self-destructive character the designer had become by the 1970s. Read full review
42
The PlaylistNikola GrozdanovicMay 25, 2014
Perhaps through time this hallucinatory quasi-dream of a biopic will grow in stature, but as first impressions go, the film loves itself so much it renders itself beautiful, but utterly shallow. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesMay 20, 2015
Saint Laurent gets across how isolating celebrity can be, how exhausting it is to keep a toehold on top of a mountain that keeps shifting underfoot. But the film is allergic to insight: It’s as numbed-out as its hero addict. Read full review
40
TheWrapInkoo KangMay 14, 2015
Ironically, then, a designer renowned for his brilliantly precise lines and proportions — enough to make a dress out of a Mondrian painting — is paid tribute by a work with disappointingly sloppy structure. Saint Laurent might glitter like the real thing, but a careful look at the construction shows it’s really just a knockoff. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 25, 2014
Saint Laurent is a well made but bafflingly airless and claustrophobic film. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 25, 2014
For all its visual fizz, Bonello’s film, which he co-wrote with Thomas Bidegain, tells us nothing about the designer save the usual pompous/concessive hero-worship. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 17, 2015
Saint Laurent’s designs and working life take a backseat to scenes of him stuffing his face with pills, accidentally poisoning his dog and sleepwalking through sex with a variety of lovers. Two and a half hours of this. Bonello might as well have shown him sleeping eight hours or using the toilet for all that says about the man and his work. Read full review
25
New York PostSara StewartMay 7, 2015
Ultimately, though, Saint Laurent is beautifully dressed with little substance, which doesn’t do much to subvert a prevailing stereotype about the industry as a whole. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsKatherine PushkarMay 13, 2015
Fashion junkies and junkie junkies are the only audiences likely to enjoy Saint Laurent. Read full review
16
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJul 9, 2015
To call the film “unwatchable” is to unfairly insult Josée Deshaies; his lush cinematography delights the eye when the camera roams around Saint Laurent’s workrooms. But “incomprehensible,” “interminable” and “immaterial” all apply. Read full review
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