Brad Pitt and Chanel No. 5??

Okay, so Chanel No. 5 ads.   WHAT. THE. POOH.  Brad Pitt is the new face of Chanel No. 5?  My friend Meg said that it happened, but I thought she was high.   Brad Pitt?  Chanel No. 5?

And then I found it – a 31 second commercial that can make the most nonsensical hallucinogenic experience seem like watching the most simplistic inaugural address.

“It’s not a journey;* every journey ends, but we go on.  The world turns and we turn with it.  Plans disappear, dreams take over.”

My eyes rolled back in my head so far in disbelief, I almost gave myself a brain aneurysm.  My snorts of laughter almost choked me.   But then, somewhere around the 18 second mark…   Brad Pitt actually turns to the camera and looks directly… at ME.

“But wherever I go… there you are… ”  

And there it is folks, that’s where my near-hysterical scoffing got stuck in my throat.  Because when he looked into the camera and said those words?  I actually clenched.  With my girlie bits.  Dead serious.  My mouth got dry.  It was akin to Johnny Depp in Chocolate suggesting that he’d “come round sometime and get that squeak out of” Juliette Binoche’s door.   But then?  Pitt looked away and the spell was completely broken with these words…

“My luck.  My fate.  My fortune.  Chanel No. 5.   Inevitable.”

I had to watch it again.  It was like a train wreck.  Eye roll, eye roll, snort, scoff, eye roll, snort, snort, scoff, eye roll, eye roll, eye roll,  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, eye roll…  OH. MY. BLESSED. GOD, blah, blah, blah, snort, scoff, snort, blah, blah, blah de freakin’ blah.

Six times.  I have watched it six times.  And I gotta say that in the midst of those 27 painful – they paid him HOW MUCH?? – seconds?  The other  4 seconds where I’m pretty sure he’s promising that he will leave Angelina Jolie for ME?   Effective advertising.  And you know how I know that?  Because I’m not even attracted to Brad Pitt.  I mean sure, when David and I play Would You Rather – we both pretty much get stuck at the “Would you rather have dinner with George Clooney and Brad Pitt?”  option, but that has everything to do with how much fun they are in the Oceans movies.  So I was a bit surprised that there was any attraction for me at all.  ‘Course, my period’s due (again) and I am incredibly horny.

Chanel perfume ads always seem to be fashioned as cinematic melodramas from the 1940s.  And let’s face it, Bette Davis did it so much better in Now Voyager.   

“Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”   

You know why these ads don’t work?  Because it’s no longer 1979 and none of these spokespeople are Catherine Deneuve.  You have to be her to pull off that existential, melodramatic shit.   Although Audrey Tautou did a pretty good job in 2009.  So maybe what I should say is that you can’t be American, or Australian, or British or a Russian immigrant to pull off a quintessentially French ad.  I think you have to be French.  Like with a capital “F” and italics, kind of French.

* and you just KNOW that there would have been a freaking semi-colon there!