This is not a brand film… Nor is it a tale. It is an evocation, a convocation of symbols and iconic images that make up Lancôme’s collective memory.
A pure aesthetic experience the video is designed to intrigue and delight, “Cecin’est pas une rose” was dreamt up by the Lancôme House with the help of director Thomas Tyman to honour 80 years of French elegance, and will ring in the official launch of a year of celebration, a year to affirm that life really is beautiful with Lancôme.
It is this idea of French beauty, and therefore free and happy beauty,that inspired a formal appropriation of Surrealism. An interplay of unprecedented combinations that pay no heed to scale, chronology or tone: images from the past and present, ambassadresses with delicious red smiles alongside the black-and-white figure of Lancôme founder Armand Petitjean.
Heritage meets avant-garde: the craftsmanship of the film with each sequence literally unfolds in a real paper theatre, element by element. It took 200 hours of work to hand-cut the 50 elements that compose the various scenes. Assembled on a set measuring 800 square metres, they were animated and filmed in real time in a clever ballet, on a millimetre scale, during a shoot that lasted over 30 hours.
