This film, made for Dior Perfumes, is a mix between the rough-hewn style of his video experiments and the lush romanticism of his cinematic films. It really shows off the potential of video for a more visceral immediacy than 24 fps film stock gives. It also means he has to work twice as hard to maintain the moody timelessness that film stock lends but he does it successfully, utilizing ambient music, a kind of step-printing effect combined with superimpositions, and the classy Marion Cotillard - who wouldn't have been out of place amongst the international icons of elegance in the '60s - to create a tale of deja vu, lost love, and the imprint of another time. He also leaves room for some classically sly Lynch humor with the line deliveries of the two hotel employees who search Cotillard's room for the intruder. Naturally, these are underlined by an unsettling offness that is the Lynch trademark (notice the shot below where one man searches the room in the right side of the background while the other man stands in the left foreground, his head cut off by the top of the frame).
One element of the short - the lost love, if you will, comes off borderline cheesy in his "I love yous" as the step-printing effect glides him away into the abyss of memory but the intensely mood-setting music and Cotillard's expressionistic face sell the moment. Ultimately, this short is more about the evocation of a tone, the creation of an atmosphere that's edgy and dark while simultaneously elegant and lushly romantic. It's a fitting advertisement for Christian Dior.
You can see the 16-minute short here.
