Mylène Farmer: Pourvu qu'elles soient douces (Libertine II)

The longest and certainly most ambitious music video Mylene Farmer created with Laurent Boutonnat, this one is a direct sequel to the video to "Libertine" (1986), which marked the first highly celebrated collaboration of the two. While that video broke new ground with its unprecedented sex and violence (specifically the full frontal nudity of the lead singer!), this is like any sequel: More of the same (well, almost, this time another girl goes full frontal), but bigger and bolder. So instead of nine minutes, this is almost twice as long, has longer dialogue scenes in the beginning and the end and features higher production values. This video looks like it took the budget of what most french art-house movies used at around the time. The results are undeniably impressive: The battle scenes at the end are fabulously staged, rather graphic and look like straight out of a feature film. The song itself, like its predecessor, is somewhat of a scandal to conservative ears, it's basically an ode to butt cheeks with the implied notion of eroticism revolving around them, either through caning (like in the video) or anal sex, as implied in the video as well. As usual, Farmer does bare her behind, too. But don't let the R-rated sex and violence scare you off, this is the most persuasive argument for music video as an art form, not merely a ploy to sell product. Like all her collaborations with Boutonnat until 1990, including "Tristana" and "Désenchantée", this is highly recommended for the way it promoted what music videos could do.