From the cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini come first images of flesh. That of actor Terence Stamp who, in Theorem, arrives in a family of the upper middle class and sleeps with all its members, including the majestic Silvana Mangano. That of Anna Magnani, a moving prostitute from Mamma Romathat of Enrique Irazoqui, the Christ of The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, but also the bodies of adolescents from Salo martyred by fascists, those of the extras, also very gendered, of the Decameron, of the Canterbury Tales and Thousand and one Night.
Finally there is the body of Pasolini himself, massacred with sticks and crushed by a car on the night of 1er on November 2, 1975 on the beach of Ostia, near Rome, during a crime committed by a teenager and of which no one has, to date, clarified the exact circumstances.
Of this unparalleled life and career, we do not associate, at first sight, clothing. However, the filmmaker was obsessed with costumes in his films. He began each new project with a particular material: the antique roughness of wool, knitted in large stitches, to King Oedipus ; thick velvet for the medieval opulence of Canterbury Tales.
“Pasolini saw the costume as a starting point, a way of fixing the film to come. » Olivier Saillard, fashion historian
“He saw the costume as a starting point, a way of fixing the film to come”, emphasizes fashion historian Olivier Saillard, now artistic director of JM Weston. The man who directed the Palais Galliera, a Parisian museum dedicated to clothing, devotes a performance, baptized Embodying Pasolini, to these costumes, in collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton. Olivier Saillard has a habit of organizing shows of a particular kind, where actresses and models wear clothes, on their bodies or in their hands.
Also listen Olivier Saillard: “In terms of fashion, we are witnessing a standardization of difference”
Like parades without commerce, plays without text, films without film: a stage, women and clothes. There were models, like Christine Bergstrom, Axelle Doué or Violeta Sanchez. Actresses, like Charlotte Rampling and, therefore, Tilda Swinton. Embodying Pasolini is his third collaboration with the latter, muse of an international and elegant auteur cinema ranging from Wes Anderson to Jim Jarmusch or Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
“Pasolini has been a kind of godfather in my life, as for many, and a source of encouragement and light. » Tilda Swinton, actress
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