Gentlemen,
As I am barely recovering from a severe case of jetlag, rather uncomfortable and tedious to manage on the way back, it is my pleasure to post the photo account of the third edition of the World Tour of La Beauté du Geste, held in Tokyo on Friday June 1st.
Before reporting on the evening, wonderful in all aspects, I must reiterate my astonishment at the quasi accidental genesis of the project, its breath taking development and most importantly, the emotional impact its 35 minutes have already had on Paris, London and Tokyo audiences
For Parisian Gentleman, the event was a source of great pride and brought on a pleasant reality check. While PG initially assumed it belonged to a style underground (upperground?) accessible to only a limited number of radical purists sharing their love of rolled lapels, milanese buttonholes, tab collars, round edges and other travettas, we are reminded every day that not only is our readership expanding exponentially, but that our words resonate to a point that we could not imagine…
In addition, public screenings of this medium length feature, perfectly in line with the PG spirit, have confirmed, if not the relevance (it is not up to us to tell), then at least the resonance carried by our ideas, images and beliefs to a much wider audience than we had imagined, no matter how remote from our original boundaries.
While the Paris and London screenings of La Beauté du Geste were clearly resounding successes, the Tokyo event stands apart in my memory, thanks to the Japanese, ever so nuanced and restrained, eager to cultivate their cultural difference of course, but also an unmatched masculine sartorial education.
We were honoured to be welcomed at the Cinemart, a beautiful artsy and indie cinema nested in a small backstreet of the bustling quarter of Roppongi. Our initial fears that the Japanese adaptation with subtitles would dilute the original emotional potency of our movie, strongly based on the inspired verve of our (inter)national Pierre Corthay, were quickly dissipated. Indeed, not only was the very large audience were very much touched by the movie and its tone, but its contents seemed a perfect fit for the Japanese soul, which seems to us like a breath-taking balance of shameless modernism and ancestral tradition, outlandish postures and elegant discretion, or almost childlike candidness and amplified refinement…
We spent a wonderful evening under the expert eye of the Japanese Corthay teams (with special thanks to Eileen Chang). It is our pleasure (and honour) to share with you a few photographic impressions.
Thank you to our Japanese friends for their so very warm welcome. We are all set for the next stop on our journey that will likely take us (in our perfectly glazed Vendômes) to the Middle-East before setting sails to the Far East in the fall. For the sake of La Beauté du Geste.
さようなら、私の日本の友人たち。 あなたは手ごわいです！
Cheer, HUGO
