While Lana Del Rey had to “just ride” on the coattails of a remix’s success in order to find a larger audience in the mainstream with “Summertime Sadness,” her true undercover song of summer is “Blue Jeans,” an Antonioni-approved rendering of the third single from her debut, Born to Die. Helmed once again by Frenchman Yoann Lemoine, who directed the Bradley Soileau companion piece prior (“Born to Die”), the black and white photography lends an obvious film noir quality to the video, along with the slow motion feel of every splash and swim stroke that soon spells disaster–troubled waters, if you will.
Like “Maggie the Cat” as embodied by Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Lana has an “itching” and “aching” aura to her persona as Soileau stands at the edge of the pool smoking his cigarette “like James Dean” (who also, incidentally, managed to star in a movie with Taylor despite only having three movies total before that premature death by car wreck). At moments lounging poolside and at times watching him from the window like a rich girl lusting after a cabana boy, the yearning and sexual tension between them is clear (though mostly on Del Rey’s part). As he blurrily dresses down to just his underwear, Lemoine gives us one of the most sensual scenes in music video history as Soileau sticks two fingers in Del Rey’s mouth and she seems to orgasm from the simple gesture.
With separate shots of Soileau and Del Rey entering the pool, the manner in which each one does so is telling of their approach to this doomed relationship. Soileau dives right in, while Del Rey, demure in her Marilyn Monroe-inspired one piece, cautiously dips her toes in before wading in slowly, knowing somewhere in her mind that the entire affair will be cursed to fail.
Tellingly, as they come closer to one another in the water, the poking out of a crocodile forewarns of further trouble…yet Del Rey must pursue her love regardless of the infested water, which has seemed to transform from a contained pool into a massive oceanic body when Lemoine gets his underwater shot featuring more crocodiles. It’s in this space, that Del Rey swims at her most carefree and oblivious, totally content to let whatever dark creatures of the sea await have their way with her so long as it means one last kiss with Soileau. And as she does get that said impassioned bisou, interspersed cuts of her swimming with and then riding the crocodiles serve to further punctuate that she cares not about the risk anymore. That the eventual fallout is worth the pleasure of the present. Consequences of enjoyment be damned.
With an intro that finds Del Rey staring into a black void of water ripples, it was already clear from the outset that whatever the premise of the story is, it cannot end well. Such is the fatalism of Del Rey, and most neorealist Italian directors. And the same could be said of summer itself–that it can’t end well. All of us going into it with such blithe naïveté, seeking only to enjoy how exquisite it is to be free, and to be free in the golden sunshine of our year-long imagination–having waited so patiently for the coldness of winter to melt away. Yet two months of solid liberty go by in the same span that only one week of winter does, slipping through our hands like the sands we use to make castles on the beach. Castles besieged by eroding waters receding into the distance of our fantasy to be unencumbered (a sentiment that summer represents better than anything).
So maybe “Summertime Sadness” is Del Rey’s forever anthem of the season. But one look at the “Blue Jeans” video and it immediately makes the case for being the perfect song for one’s end of summer blues. Now drown in them, darling, drown.
