Mylène Farmer: Pourvu qu'elles soient douces (Libertine II) (1988) Online

The longest and certainly most ambitious music video Mylene Farmer created with Laurent Boutonnat, this one is a direct sequel to the video to "Libertine" (1986), which marked the first highly celebrated collaboration of the two. While that video broke new ground with its unprecedented sex and violence (specifically the full frontal nudity of the lead singer!), this is like any sequel: More of the same (well, almost, this time another girl goes full frontal), but bigger and bolder. So instead of nine minutes, this is almost twice as long, has longer dialogue scenes in the beginning and the end and features higher production values. This video looks like it took the budget of what most french art-house movies used at around the time. The results are undeniably impressive: The battle scenes at the end are fabulously staged, rather graphic and look like straight out of a feature film. The song itself, like its predecessor, is somewhat of a scandal to conservative ears, it's basically an ode to butt cheeks with the implied notion of eroticism revolving around them, either through caning (like in the video) or anal sex, as implied in the video as well. As usual, Farmer does bare her behind, too. But don't let the R-rated sex and violence scare you off, this is the most persuasive argument for music video as an art form, not merely a ploy to sell product. Like all her collaborations with Boutonnat until 1990, including "Tristana" and "Désenchantée", this is highly recommended for the way it promoted what music videos could do.

"Pourvu qu'elles soient douces" or "Libertine 2" is an 18-minute short film from France that was released back in 1989, so it's already over 25 years old. And as the title already suggests, it is the sequel to Canadian singer Mylène Farmer's "Libertine" from a couple years earlier. About that previous video I thought it was a great song and weak video and about this sequel here, it is forgettable in both regards. Farmer's films have a tendency to look like period pieces and this one here is a perfect example of this. But it seems very shallow from the period piece perspective and the music is also not worth listening to unfortunately. I am quite a fan of some other Farmer works, but here I find it mostly disappointing. This criticism of course not only refers to her, but also to the people who directed and wrote this one. I don't think it should have been made or made entirely different. If you still want to see it, don't be fooled by the French title as this is one rare occasions where Farmer's work is in English.