Is this the most cringey fake surfing ever?
Sex sells. And so does surfing! Long has adland flirted with the sport of kings producing such memorable campaigns as Hollister’s shoulder grip reacharound, Tommy Hilfiger’s The Most Annoying People In The World On A Beach and Selfridge’s totally authentic Board Games.
But now Chanel is getting in on the action with a Baz Luhrman-directed follow-up The One That I Want to his 2004 commercial No.5 The Film, featuring Nichole Kidman.
Selling the No.5 perfume, both ads depict a woman in the midst of eloping, with a nod to Baz’s biblical affair story, Moulin Rouge.
Baz is well-known for his magic realist approach and he utilises it in full cheese-mode here so that the surf scenes take Blue Crush to a new Transformers realm and the beach house resembles an upstate plastic surgery centre run by the preppy torturer-murderers of Haneke’s Funny Games.
It’s as soulless as the botox in every No.5-wearing desperate housewife’s face from the Hamptons to Laguna Beach, but maybe it makes a nice break from the pseudo spiritual happy camper surf cameos we’re used to.
There’s nothing wrong with a little creative license right? Cue this Guinness ad. King of stouts and fake surf scenes.
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