Academy Award Nominee Celine Song Directs Sarah Pidgeon in New Commercials for Balenciaga

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Balenciaga just dropped the first installment of their new bag campaign starring Sarah Pidgeon, written and directed by Celine Song, and featuring the brand’s Le City, Le 7 Bowling, and Rodeo bags.

Celine Song, of course, is the brilliant writer and director of the Academy Award-nominated Past Lives. Easily one of the best movies of 2023. And her followup, Materialists, was also excellent. And we will forever love her for her answer to this interview question about that film being labeled “broke man propaganda.” Song is a real one and an absolutely prodigious talent.

Like Song — who wrote Past Lives as a play before turning it into a film when its premiere was thwarted by the pandemic — actor Sarah Pidgeon also came up in the New York theater scene. Although most people know her for playing Carolyn Bessette in FX’s Love Story, her real breakthrough came on the stage after she worked for years to develop the award-winning play with music Stereophonic, eventually taking the show to Broadway and winning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2024.

The commercial features Pidgeon entering a dry cleaner in Manhattan and digging around in her capacious Rodeo bag for her claim ticket — a bag that, like the Tardis or Mary Poppins’ carpet bag from the 1964 film, is much larger on the inside than it appears to be on the outside.

Now… Past Lives 2.0 this commercial is not. But fashion brands always struggle to create impactful videos, especially narrative-driven ones. Still, it’s nice to see a brand like Balenciaga recognize the immense talent of these two crossover stars. Here’s hoping they both made the kind of money that can empower them to do poorly paid, but artistically significant work for years to come. (And if they got some free clothes and bags out of the deal, well, ain’t no one gonna be mad about a little extra Pierpaolo Piccioli in their wardrobe.)