Chanel No.5 ad, Baz Luhrmann

Directed by Baz Luhrmann of The Great Gatsby and Moulin Rogue fame, the Chanel No. 5 advert-turned-film employs Luhrmann's style of glamour, perfectly pitched music and breathtaking visuals.

The plot
The story is satisfyingly simple: woman doubts her marriage, undergoes a very quick existential crisis and ultimately (spoiler alert) chooses her child and husband over her career as a model. For those of you looking for an intellectual criticism of the luxury brand industry, this isn't it.
Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel's Chanel No. 5 has a long history of beautiful advertisements. After the uncomfortable 'Inevitable' campaign featuring a wild haired Brad Pitt, however, the new advert is a much welcomed returned to the tried and tested method. The advert opens with Gisele Bündchen - or a body-double blessed with Gisele Bündchen's legs (lucky them) - surfing atop epic waves in Fiji. After surfing in Fiji, clearly no expense was spared as the film then roves to a gleaming white house in the Hamptons, consequently following the model across New York's Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan where she lustily embraces her husband - sadly not Gisele's husband Tom Brady but equally dashing Game of Thrones actor Michiel Huisman.

Chanel No.5 music
Against the slow motion running, longing looks into the distance and close ups of flowing hair is a haunting cover of 'You're the One that I Want' by Matthew Hemerlein, otherwise known as Lo-Fang. 'You're the One that I Want,' originally written by John Farrar of The Shadows and The Strangers fame for the 1978 film Grease, is poignantly transformed in a style similar to Hemerlein's Hot Nickels album of 2011. Straying away from the sound established in Lo-Fang's Blue Film album, and returning to an older style, the song itself will garner listens long after the advert has disappeared into cyber space. Even without the glamour of Chanel's advert, this song is well worth a listen. In the strain of a high-end John Lewis Christmas epic - think back to Gabrielle Aplin's 'The Power of Love' - this is a hauntingly beautiful cover.

Culture Whisper says...
Predictably glamorous, Luhrmann executes the advert perfectly, it is unquestionably seductive and beautiful. Nevertheless it was a formula that seemed, how should I put it, inevitable.