To celebrate Saint Laurent’s spring/summer 2021 collection, creative director Anthony Vaccarello tapped indie film legend Jim Jarmusch to conceive an experimental short around several looks from the collection. 

The nine-minute film, which debuted quietly last week, tells the story of a dinner party gone wrong, in which a group of three friends (played by actresses Julianne Moore and Chloë Sevigny and model Indya Moore) wander about the house of their mischievous host (Charlotte Gainsbourg) trying in vain to find her.

From the perspective of a bewildered waiter (Leo Reilly, the son of actor John C. Reilly), all four women seem to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, only to reappear seconds later in different clothes, sashaying up to Reilly, who offers them glasses of water.

“It’s French,” he tells them, before they leave again to resume their cat-and-mouse game with Gainsbourg. 

A still from the film. Photo courtesy Saint Laurent.

The film, titled French Water and art-directed by Vaccarello, and which presents several hit moments from a collection that sought to capture the spirit of Yves Saint Laurent’s cultural influences and early color palettes, is the follow-up to a previous short that debuted in December directed by Gaspar Noé, the son of Argentine painter and writer Luis Felipe Noé.

Entitled Summer of ‘21, that arty film was an homage to several 1970s Italian horror films, including Dario Argento’s 1977 classic Suspiria, which Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino recently reimagined in 2018.

For Jarmusch’s latest, a vague logline serves as the official description of the film.

“The dinner party is over. A lone waiter is watching guests search for Charlotte. The echoes of their whispers multiply. Anthony Vaccarello chose Jim Jarmusch to orchestrate a dreamy, surreal ballet, following his own rules. Mysterious, elusive Charlotte keeps disappearing and reappearing. Tangled until creating a form of vertigo, space and time spin beautifully. Into eternity.”

Mysterious indeed!

Catch the short below.