Surrealist film director David Lynch has directed an advertisement for US$50 (€37, £29) nail polish to match French footwear designer Christian Louboutin’s signature shiny red-lacquered soles.
The designer has teamed up with New York-based Batallure Beauty – the creative minds behind Material Girl by Madonna and the Justin Bieber fragrance – to form Christian Louboutin Beauté: a line of luxury cosmetics.
Lynch’s
The Rouge Louboutin Film shows a bizarre journey through a deserted city in space filled with pale pink spiked towers and silver orb clouds that has been dubbed ‘Loubiville’. Minus the normal female models used in adverts, this video’s only human element is a pair of manicured hands in several poses in stills, captured by a camera. The spooky sci-fi thriller music in the background creates a tense atmosphere, typical of dystopian Lynch films such as
Mulholland Drive,
Blue Velvet and
Twin Peaks.
The polish bottle’s cap is inspired by Louboutin’s Ballerina Ultima stiletto shoe which is considered to be the highest heel he has created. It is a tall black spike, which screws onto a cubist bubble-shaped polish bottle. When put together with 30 shades other than the famous scarlet red, the spikes of the nail enamel pots will line up to look like those from the city of ‘Loubiville’ in the video.
It is not unheard of for film directors to make advertisements like this one, for example Lynch also directed the Sony PlayStation 2 that resembled elements of his 1977 film
Eraserhead and also a fairly straightforward commercial for Clearblue pregnancy tests.
In the
beauty industry Sophia Coppola directed Christian Dior’s Miss Dior perfume advert and Martin Scorsese created Chanel’s Bleu de Chanel fragrance advert. Besides being a medium for film directors to bring their individual and recognisable styles of filmmaking to the world of advertising, these filmmakers create intrigue – and perhaps a USP – for consumers.
