Metacritic reviews

Though the screenplay, based on Laurence Benaim’s biography, is all build-up and no payoff, there is just enough emotional insight to compensate for the lack of narrative fireworks in the last half-hour.

As elegant as the man's clothes, this handsome biopic traces 20 incident-filled years in the life of the designer.

Jalil Lespert’s film treats its hero with a high seriousness that not even Niney’s uncanny portrayal of YSL’s artistry and mental fragility can justify.

Rather than do something freshly cinematic with Saint Laurent’s precise, elegant creations, the film is content to exhibit them.

With Yves Saint Laurent, Lespert has played it safe but stylish, and pulls it off thanks to some canny casting choices and a refreshing focus on mainstream appeal.

Over the twenty-odd years the film covers, Saint Laurent is scene-by-scene depicted as a genius, a manic-depressive, a polyamorist, a drug taker, a mercurial friend, a partier and a terribly, terribly sensitive soul. He undoubtedly was all of these things and more, it's just a pity he doesn't also come across as a person.

Clothes make the man, but can’t save the film, in Yves Saint Laurent, in which the life of one of haute couture’s great innovators gets disappointingly by-the-numbers treatment.

Sadly, this polite film, though touching in places, is so desperate not to offend, it’s the film equivalent of sensible shoes. Diehard fashionistas may disagree.

The film's purpose is the reverent mystification of everything that avowedly makes YSL special.

For all of the supposed passion and anguish in Saint Laurent's clothing and relationships, Jalil Lespert consistently neglects to imbue the film with such a comparable level of ambition or desire.