Saint Laurent

The two Blu-ray features following "Saint Laurent," which is in French with English subtitles, give a more passionate and concise overview of the groundbreaking couturist than the long (almost two and a half hours, with almost endless club scenes, and an unnecessarily long shareholders meeting), slow and strangely whispery biopic.

In "Bertrand Bonello," the director ("realistature et co-scenariste") explains that his film focuses on a decade in Yves Saint Laurent's life, from 1967-1976, to "show the price he paid for being who he was." Over the course of three acts - most during the height of YSL's career, one near the end of his life - Bonello "uncovers a myth, a destiny" and he prefers to "convey emotions, not give explanations" of the designer's decadent lifestyle.

"The Characters" offers bon mots from each actor about the titular icon. Gaspard Ulliel quietly plays YSL with a coquettish smirk, chain-smoking (even for a Frenchman) throughout, the man who invented designer initials on handbags and Opium perfume, who had an ongoing correspondence with Andy Warhol, who wore large black spectacles and had a proclivity for anonymous sex, pills and booze. "He's an artist, not just a designer," Ulliel says of his character.

Jeremie Renier plays Pierre Berge, the "man behind the brand," and calls YSL "way ahead of his time, a visionary." YSL's inspiration was Loulou, played by Lea Seydoux, who notes he was "the first to design today's fashion."

Louis Garrel, as YSL's destructive, mustachioed lover Jacques de Bascher, calls him "genius, avant-garde," and Aymeline Valade, as YSL's first model, blonde Betty, thinks the designer is "irreplaceable."

As YSL's design supervisor Anne-Marie, Amira Casar says he "touched generations of women."

Not much is learned about the man who remains a fashion icon, who turned couture into pret-a-porter for the masses yet "had never been to a supermarket or learned to change a light bulb." And, acknowledging his ubiquitous initials, the character wonders "'Y' am I all alone?"

"Saint Laurent"
Blu-ray
$24.97
http://sonyclassics.com/saintlaurent/