Common Sense Media Review
By Joyce Slaton
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Tense, complicated look at haute couture in wartime France.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 15+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
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The New Look
What's the Story?
THE NEW LOOK swings back and forth in time, between Nazi-occupied France where designers Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) and Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) make tricky choices to protect themselves and post-war 1947, when Dior introduced his trend-setting New Look. Both designers did things during the war that invited harsh backlash, and we are invited inside to watch and judge, as well as to admire the beautiful haute couture designs both made.
Is It Any Good?
A big cinematic show with elegant set dressing and costumes, powerhouse actors, and complicated, shifting politics, this drama is a grownup treat. The New Look scores by marrying wartime menace with a rarefied world few are allowed to enter, that of the highest of haute couture fashion. There are long moments in which viewers are invited to just gaze upon a beautiful designer-created look, as when a model spins dreamily in a Christian Dior New Look suit while the background blurs and a trill of strings plays on the score. And then in alternating scenes, we see members of the French Resistance tortured, bloodied, and then pinned up against a wall and shot dead.
It's all quite gripping, and Juliette Binoche and Ben Mendelsohn are excellent in their roles as the conflicted Chanel and Dior, both of whom, history remembers, wound up collaborating with and/or designing for Nazi forces in Nazi-occupied France. In Dior's case, his weak point was his sister Catherine (Maisie Williams), a member of the Resistance, and The New Look dramatically illustrates his terror. Chanel is a more complicated figure, and yet Binoche is such a sympathetic actor that we understand, too, how she begins with the best of intentions and then makes choices that history doesn't regard kindly. The New Look is a powerful and complex look at what terror and oppression does to people both ordinary and extraordinary alike; not an easy watch, but a great one.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the historical period in which The New Look takes place. What do you know about it? What do you know about high fashion during that period, and what designers did during the war?
The New Look takes place during World War II and contains a lot of Nazi imagery and ideology. Have you seen other movies set in this milieu? How close is The New Look's portrayal of Nazis compared to others you have seen?
Many designer gowns are shown in The New Look, and the narrative often slows down so we can admire them. What is this show trying to convey by focusing on fashion in the midst of terror?
TV Details
- Premiere date : February 14, 2024
- Cast : Juliette Binoche , Maisie Williams , Ben Mendelsohn
- Network : Apple TV
- Genre : Drama
- TV rating :
- Last updated : August 1, 2024
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