Mylène Farmer - Libertine

Released in the summer of 1986, Libertine is the song that made Mylène Farmer, and its music video changed what a French clip could be: an eleven-minute costume drama set in the mid-eighteenth century, directed by Laurent Boutonnat, shot by candlelight in the manner of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon at the châteaux of Ferrières and Brou, in Seine-et-Marne, on a budget then unheard of for a young singer.

The film opens with a pistol duel under a fine rain. Libertine — the androgynous, red-haired character Mylène Farmer adopted for good with this video — faces a man and shoots him dead, coldly, under the horrified eyes of his mistress, a mysterious woman in red. That man, the duelist, is Hervé Lewis. His death sets the whole story in motion: the woman in red will recognise Libertine at the end of the film and take her revenge.

A former boxer and a physical trainer for performers, Lewis had already appeared on screen for Mylène Farmer the year before, in Plus grandir. Libertine gave him his most visible role in front of her camera, and the beginning of a working relationship that ran for decades: he prepared the singer physically for her tours, from 1989 to Timeless 2013, before moving to the other side of the lens — his photographs appear on the single Oui mais... Non (2010) and on the cover of the album Monkey Me (2012). The body in movement, which he first embodied on screen, became the subject of his photography.

Markowicz Fine Art presents the fine art photography of Hervé Lewis. This video is shown as a document of the artist's career; it is not a work available for purchase.