“Vanessa Paradis Divinidylle Tour” is more than a live concert recording. It is a documentary of her 2007/8 music tour in France. There are behind-the-scene footages narrated through the interviews of Vanessa and her band. These footages offer rare insights – especially for those who live outside of France – on the music creation journey of the music album “Divinidylle”, which in my opinion, is her best work to date. I am in love with “Divinidylle” (read more on the previous review here); and I cannot remember where I bought the Blu-ray version of this documentary (either in Paris or Hong Kong). It is a must-have if you are her music fan. Her previous concert recording was released back in 2001, “Vanessa Paradis Au Zenith”, which I too have both the DVD and the CD for that recording. This recent recording is taken mostly from the concert at Bercy in Paris. The stadium looked huge when I attended Mylene Farmer’s concert back in the early 2000. It still looks huge when I watch it on TV.
While Vanessa may have released a few music albums (her debut was released when she was 14), she may be more well known as an actress or a model. I can relate to her guitarist Matthieu Chedid when he mentioned that working with Vanessa is like working with an icon, instead of a musician even though she is a good musician. Matthieu, someone looks to me as the driving force behind the tour. Not in a overshadowing sense, but to support Vanessa with full devotion. He got her into doing something simple and fun on stage, like playing the guitar or the drums. On stage, Matthieu – who releases his solo album and has co-worked on Paradis’s “Divinidylle” album – is on fire with his guitar. Together with the rest of the talented band members, they have added vigor to the songs, transforming the easy listening numbers into songs that move your feet, make you wave your hands in the air (like to me, for instance). Each musician has his intimate moment with Vanessa – musically speaking. This live documentary contains 24 songs, presented in a lengthy 2 hours 30 minutes recording.
Matthieu describes Vanessa as iconic, fun, and accurate [in tone] and has good timing. I think the acoustic video recording below sums that up well.