Honestly, nothing is more depressing than these luxury brand ads. It is as if every bit of humanity and life and spontaneity has been completely sucked out of every shot and every movement of the actors. Why in the world would any brand bother to hire a great director and then ask for THIS? This is just a boring, cliched print ad with motion and music. There are any number of famous and qualified stills cameramen who could have coaxed Blake Lively into being more stiff, more robotic, and less lifelike. Why Refn?

Other directors have tried this racket and virtually all have had their voices buried under a ton of luxury brand pretentiousness. The only one I can think that ever managed to escape with his voice left relatively intact was Baz Luhrmann when he did a Chanel ad with Nicole Kidman. That piece actually felt like part of his body of work.

But everyone else just gets buried under the sequins and beauty light.