I Just Fell In Love With This Short Film About Opera

At the beginning of the month, Opéra national de Paris released a promotional video by Bret Easton Ellis, a sharp and visceral writer best known for his novel American Psycho. Angela Natividad wrote a brilliant overview of the project for AdWeek that provides a good bit of insight from Ellis alongside her own sharp observations.

It’s probably too easy to compare “Figaro” to American Psycho. But the desperation and emotional instability that laced Patrick Bateman’s excesses can be vividly felt here, too. In another director’s hands, it could easily have been a gratuitous Gossip Girl party scene about the wasteful play of the bored rich (a category into which the opera often falls).

What’s also beautiful about the video is the freedom Ellis was reportedly afforded. It apparently provided an opportunity to focus on the sorts of creative storytelling technics we recently examined as opposed to one more high profile project that is nothing more than the same old ham-handed “great art” offering wrapped in top shelf production values.

This turned into one of those videos I simply kept watching over and over again throughout the day because there’s so much to geek out on. To that end, how cool is it that Ellis shot the whole thing in what looks an awful lot like 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision 70 (but I would love to know for certain).