Fine jewelry is traditionally viewed through the lens of decoration, wealth, or status. However, a new short film by director and writer LUTZ completely flips this narrative, exploring jewelry not as an external ornament, but as an internal portal—a catalyst capable of transporting the wearer into an entirely imaginary life.
Titled À la folie, pas du tout, the 1-minute-and-56-second film (running 2:11 with credits) was created for Mariana Vicintin, a small, family-owned fine jewelry brand based in São Paulo. Seamlessly blending high fashion aesthetics with surrealist imagery, the film functions as a cyclical, poetic exploration of the mind.
Unlike traditional films where visuals dictate the script, À la folie, pas du tout was conceived as a poem-styled story long before a camera was ever turned on. This foundational text became the film’s narration, delivered in a mix of French and English with subtitles. In a strict inversion of standard filmmaking logic, the voice and the text came first; the visuals were built entirely to follow their rhythm and prose.
The film’s title borrows the final lines of the classic French petal-plucking game: un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout (“a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all”). True to its name, the film exists entirely between those two emotional extremes: “madly” and “not at all.” It carves out a quiet space where total obsession and total absence soften into the very same gentle feeling—a freeing realm where reality and imagination comfortably coexist.