"Perfume from the cinema"
50 years ago Marilyn Monroe declared that she couldn't fall asleep without putting on a drop of [Chanel perfume] No. 5 -- and she wasn't even paid for saying that. Today, under an exclusive contract with Chanel or another company, she would be on 4 x 3 posters on walls the world over, a bottle of perfume nestle between her breasts.The luxury perfume industry frequently picks movies stars for its models, but it's not a waste when they choose talented actors or actresses. What could be better than an Oscar-winning beauty? That's Hilary Swank's naked body in the ads for Guerlain's Insolence; Charlize Theron is the golden goddess murmuing "J'adore" for Dior and ... Clive Owen, the "über sexual" (a new type of "metrosexual" but more ... sexual) forHypnôse, from Lancôme. The latest Hollywood darling to represent a perfume: Keira Knightley, who will "incarnate" Coco Mademoiselle, from Chanel, on walls and screens everywhere. But, if Hilary and Charlize were filmed as "regular" models, in ads in which the silks and fabrics mattered more than their own personalities, Keira is directed in a chic, 60-second film by Joe Wright (who directed her in P & P and Atonement, which will open the Venice Film Festival). Before the camera of a director who knows her so well, the young 21-year old comedienne is elegant and mischievious, like a new Audrey Hepburn. When the perfume makers are watching their film, they can revel in the scent of an actress.