Thursday, July 10, 2008

Is Poker a Game of Skill or Chance?

One of the joys of advertising apart from the stirring of the imagination is the recreation of other times with all the exquisite details of bringing an aura of a forgotten epoch into the here and now. For Chanel the mythical era has always been the 1920s & 1930s: the time when she revolutionized the fashion (and fragrance) industry. It comes as no surprise therefore that a little touch of that glamour resplendent with marcelled/bobbed hair and dark-shaded lids and lips should reappear from time to time modernised or not so much.
The following Chanel Chance parfum commercial subscribes to the latter tendency and comes from 2006, featuring male model Vincent Lacrocq and actress Amandine Maugy in a setting worth its art director's salt. From the sumptuous dresses to the intricate jewellery (oh, the briolettes chandelier earrings!) to the exquisite recreation of hair and makeup, the clip makes me want to jump right into La Règle du Jeu.



They're playing poker (oh so suggestive!), a game which has a reputation to proceed it. He has a straight flush hand, she has a royal flush!
Just how probable that is in a single table, you'd ask. Well, the probability of a straight flush is 0.0015% among 2,598,560 possibilities to be exact! Talking about imagination.

There is some doubt whether this is a genuine advertisement sanctioned by Parfums Chanel, in light of Amandine Maugy's site mentioning this is a "fausse pub", meaning a mock commercial. However it has definitely the air of a grand-scale production, which requires a skilled director and crew; not to mention the Chanel logo and the brandname Chance is not merely edited to appear at the end like in amateur productions, but it appears in the cards themselves: an inherent part of the plot! Therefore there seems to be some truth in it after all. I believe this has aired somewhere and if you do recall it, please say so! I'd love to find out.



Clip originally uploaded by Nepraustaburnis on youtube

4 comments:

  1. Very interesting commercial, like many I can say I have never seen it, while I enjoyed it a great deal, maybe it was pulled because it really does not fit the actual fragrance.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous17:20

    Strange commercial and not one I have seen either.
    Are these people French? Sounds like they might be. Maybe it was only broadcast there? Just a guess.
    I agree that it doesn't fit the actual fragrance.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jen,

    you think so, huh? It's a probability. Didn't think of it that way.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sue,

    I think you're correct going by the names. Not sure on the model, but Amandine certainly is.
    I hope some of our French readers chime in and confirm whether it was or was not broadcast in France.

    ReplyDelete

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