Today (14 October 2024) Chanel has announced that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are the new faces of Chanel No.5 with a new campaign film by Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers, Queer).
Shot in California and named See You at 5, the film sees Robbie and Elordi caught in a ‘will they won’t they’ romantic tryst against the backdrop of Big Sur’s setting sun.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Luca Guadagnino’s Chanel No.5 campaign: watch the film
The narrative arc of See You at 5 begins with the producer and titular star of Barbie sending a message to Elordi (who is known for breakout roles in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla) inviting him to meet her at 5 o’clock.
Robbie dabs a touch of Chanel No.5 onto her neck, before both Australian actors jump into their respective modes of transport – a silver sportscar and a motorbike – and head towards each other. Ultimately, a mix-up in the agreed location means the rendezvous does not take place, with the film ending on an anticipatory note as Robbie takes a carefree dip in the sea. ‘Wearing perfume can set a mood and it also lingers,’ she tells Wallpaper*. ‘Someone can walk out of the room and they are still kind of there.’
‘Wearing perfume can set a mood and it also lingers. Someone can walk out of the room and they are still kind of there.’
Margot Robbie on Chanel No.5
Chanel No.5 was made for Coco Chanel by nose Ernest Beaux in 1921 and is undisputedly the most iconic perfume in the world. Each campaign that accompanies the fragrance is considered a cinematic work of art in its own right. Guadagnino joins the the likes of Baz Luhrmann, who was tapped by Karl Lagerfeld in 2004 to create No. 5 the Film starring Nicole Kidman, followed by The One That I Want with Gisele Bündchen ten years later.
Lagerfeld also worked with Luc Besson for the 1998 short Le Loup, where model Estella Warren – dressed as Little Red Riding Hood – has an unforgettable encounter with a wolf. Ridley Scott was the director responsible for the 1986 Chanel No.5 campaign Monuments, which has been referenced in See You at 5. (Scott captured French actor Carole Bouquet road-tripping across the American desert in the same red skirt suit now worn by Robbie.)
‘[Luca Guadagnino] directed See You at 5 in 35mm, in order to better reveal the grain of the skin, the tremors of a first date that vibrate between a woman and the object of her desire,’ Chanel says in a statement.
Fittingly soundtracked with Daft Punk’s Veridis Quo (the name of the song toys with the Latin phrase quo vadis which translates to ‘where are you going?’), at 140 seconds in total, See You at 5 is a ‘film of unprecedented length’ for a Chanel No.5 campaign.
Watch it in full below.
