You’re not an auteur these days unless you make some kind of perfume/fashion commercial (see Nicolas Winding Refn, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, Harmony Korine, etc). And while snarkier cinephiles might argue that Terrence Malick has already made at least or two full length perfume commercials with “To The Wonder” and “Knight Of Cups,” the filmmaker is actually stepping into the world of commercials. You can say this much about Malick: his late career revival continues to take surprising turns.
Le Figaro reveals that Malick will get behind the camera to helm an ad for Guerlain, starring Angelina Jolie. In a nice twist, however, the revenues generated from the campaign will be donated to charity. As for the ad, while Malick die-hards will dream of some bold reinvention of the commercial form, inevitably, all these perfume ads wind up looking pretty much the same no matter who is behind the camera. Perhaps Malick’s might have more twirling though.
But we’ll see soon enough as the first ads in the campaign are expected to roll out in March.
