Linkshoch
Wonderful Movie
Curt
Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.
Francene Odetta
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Robert J. Maxwell
Nothing much really happens in this fifteen-minute short by David Lynch. Yet I couldn't take my eyes off the nothing much.Another reviewer claims this is a dull movie but a fine commercial. If I hadn't been told it was a commercial for Lady Dior or Luis Vuitton or Sigfried Sassoon or Max Factor, I wouldn't have known.Yes, the bespoke handbag features prominently in the film, but not TOO prominently, and it functions in the film as a link between a phantasmagorical past love and the present circumstances of the curiously boffo Marion Cotillard. She enters her hotel room, a tango from the 1920s playing on the radio, and finds this glittering handbag on the floor of her room Shanghai and two Chinese house detectives appear and ask her about it. Then they stand motionless, speechless, while she spins out this tale of experiencing deja vu at lunch. The story involves her and a lover escaping a room in 1920s Shanghai and landing on a rooftop, at which point the lover says he can't be with her and fades away while handing her a blue flower.Back to the present. Under the eyes of the two statuesque investigators, she finally opens the bag. Guess what's in it.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
I really love Marion Cotillard and her being in a David Lynch movie could be truly something special, even if it only goes for 15 minutes. This is part of Cotillard's Dior campaign, where each film represents one color. This one about the color blue is actually the longest of them. However, there really wasn't that much focus on the color as I thought there would be. Obviously the rose in the end, then maybe the blue tower and the lights of the cameras, but that's pretty much it. I guess Lynch didn't really know how to use the color best, so he simply used the rose in the end.A woman comes to her hotel room, but music is running and somebody must have been there as there is an item in her room which doesn't belong there. The woman is worried and calls security only to tell them the story of her and her significant other. I have to say the mystery parts early on were solid, but when this turned into a film about Cotillard and her Asian friend, it really got worse. What a shame. I truly wanted this to be better. I have to say, I even enjoyed Cotillard's one minute comedy short "Forehead Tittaes" from 2010 even more. "Lady Blue Shanghai", not recommended.
nielshell
This 16-minute internet-aired motion picture was created by Dior. It was available until October 2010 on Dior's website and the name Dior appears on-screen outside the picture viewing area. Except for this the viewer would have no idea that the picture was advertising for Dior.The picture opens with Cotillard, whose character is not given a name in the motion picture, hearing a 1920s tango ("Fate-Tango Valentino" written by Nathaniel Shilkret to commemorate Rudolph Valentino) in the hall as she walks to her hotel suite. She opens the door to see a circa 1940 RCA Victor phonograph playing Shilkret's original 78 rpm recording of the song. An expensive Dior handbag then appears amidst elaborate visual effects involving smoke. The remainder of the film is devoted to her reaction and the events leading to these mysterious happenings.The film is extremely well done, using sound and visual effects characteristic of David Lynch audio-video productions and with Cotillard giving an excellent performance.Thanks, Dior, for creating an entertaining film and for not ruining it with intrusive advertising.
MisterWhiplash
Apparently, and maybe I'm thick-in-the-head, this David Lynch short film is a commercial for Lady Dior, which is basically a really fancy handbag. This isn't a surprise that Lynch would make a commercial - he has made several over the years, maybe as a means to get some of his ideas out there into the cinematic medium, and maybe, perhaps, to get some quick money. But this is a little different: this is a 16 minute film where it's really about a woman who goes to a hotel, a record is playing mysteriously in her room, and a handbag shines very brightly. She calls the hotel-help asking what is going on, and then tells a story of meeting a man before... or thinking she's met a man before, in Shanghai. The power of this short film is that a) I didn't have any real clue that it was a long-form commercial while watching it, and b) it carries the kind of unique mystery that Lynch unlocks with his approach to cinema - the cinematography (in this case digital video, with a more sophisticated eye than the experimentation of Inland Empire), the editing that emphasizes the human face and the enigmatic movement of characters in the frame, sound editing that is not-of-this world. I still am not quite sure what it's all about, or if it's really what it is in that handbag (I'm more-so reminded of the elusive nature of the blue box from Mulholland Drive), and I almost don't want to know, at least not until two or three more viewings. It also is a big asset that Cotillard, stunning in appearance and her quiet intensity, works so well here for him as his female-muse. Does it mean as much as his other short films? I'm still not sure about that either. Compared to some of the works on his Short Films of David Lynch or Best of DavidLynch.com DVDs, its not any kind of absurd thing he's dealing with here. It's like a splintered-in-his-mind romantic drama where love and loss and memory and not knowing converge into something one can look at and maybe recognize, or just feel. It's sublime work by a master of his self-made craft.
