YMMV / Saint Laurent

• Award Snub:
  • France submitted this film for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but it was not nominated.
  • Pierre Niney of Yves Saint Laurent won the César Award for Best Actor over Gaspard Ulliel, despite Saint Laurent having been nominated for more awards.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A scene where two models, one completely nude, discuss Yves goes on for several minutes before it is contextualized as a photo shoot.
• Broken Base: This film and its rival Yves Saint Laurent have both succeeded in pissing off Saint Laurent's fanbase for various reasons. Saint Laurent, in particular, has been criticized for rubbernecking the more lurid aspects of Saint Laurent's life while not focusing on his genuine brilliance as a designer.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Yves and Loulou's incessant smoking is accurate but harsher when you realize that they both died of smoking-related illnesses. He died of brain cancer in 2008 and she died of lung cancer in 2011.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The film references the controversy of the name of the perfume Opium, but it does not discuss or portray Saint Laurent's reaction to potential bans. He threw a huge, expensive launch party on a yacht in New York City, complete with fireworks, celebrities and drugs, which later moved, en masse, to Studio 54.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Many people expected this film to portray Pierre badly, given it was the production without his approval, but in some respects he comes off better in this film than the authorized one. This is simply because it doesn't explore the character much beyond his protectiveness of Yves and their company and omits his own infidelities and pettiness. The film acknowledges Pierre's importance as a business man, but it portrays him as a jealous killjoy who broke up Yves and Jacques's affair, which is the central romance of the film. However, it's hard to fault Pierre for being suspicious of the younger man who is creating chaos in their lives or being hurt by his long-time love's new infatuation ^note In real life, they had an open relationship, but Pierre suspected that Karl Lagerfeld had sent Jacques to create chaos and destabilize the YSL brand. .

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