On January 7th, 2002, at a press conference in his Paris salon, Yves Saint Laurent announced the end of his 44-year career as a fashion designer. In his retirement speech, Saint Laurent quoted Marcel Proust, whose intimations about "the neurotics" and their suffering for works of art, the French-Algerian couturier felt a deep kinship with: "Without knowing it, I am part of this family. It is mine. [...] I rubbed shoulders with those whom Rimbaud called firemakers, that I found myself, that I understood that the most important encounter in life, is the encounter with oneself." Saint Laurent's sober good-bye to a world he dazzled, vitalized, and transformed, captured the "phantoms" -- solitude, depression, drugs, the changing business -- that plagued the visionary.

But in Pierre Thoretton's documentary, L'Amour Fou, which opens with this historic press conference, it's Yves Saint Laurent's partnership with Pierre Bergé, in life and business, that shapes and narrates the long and enduring passion the two men shared for beauty; their homes, their objets d'art, their friends and muses.

Intercut with archival footage and interviews with Bergé, the couple's staggering art collection -- which following Saint Laurent's death, Bergé decided to auction off at Christie's -- is cataloged, crated up, and remembered; Picasso's and Modigliani's that stir like Proust's madeleine. We recently chatted with Thoretton.

Where did you first come up with this documentary, your first? Had you always been fascinated by Saint Laurent and Bergé's love story?

I was producing a film that was on the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé and their homes, and what happened was that during the course of it I met the merchants who were selling them and what I found when conversing with them was what was most interesting was how they bought the art, the couple, and the love that these two people had for each other. On top of which the rushes I was looking at from the film that I was making, they were very pretty but they were extremely boring. I kept getting information about the relationship rather than the objects.

Did you ever feel that it you were getting too intrusive or that Pierre was not willing to talk about certain aspects of his life with Yves?

Never. He was free in his thoughts and his words, and in the freedom that he gave himself to do it.

Prior to this film, you were mostly working as a still photographer on sets. Can you speak to the transition from that to shooting your first feature length documentary?

It was a contest of circumstances. I was doing different things and then I think I was the person  who was in the perfect place at the right time.  But I don't ask myself sort of academic or scholarly questions like "Did I get training to do this or make a documentary?" I just do what I want.

There's a certain elegance to the film that channels Yves Saint Laurent's work and I was wondering if that was intentional or more of a product of working so closely with Pierre and all the archival footage?

Oh thank you! A very tiny portion of the film is chance, I mean the rest of it, how you edit, how you shoot something, all of it, is a choice. I was using the archives as if they were actors. If it came out elegantly it's because I am facing people who had incredible taste and who were very elegant, and I happened to rise to the occasion.

What's your personal relationship to fashion?

Previously I had none but doing this movie, I discovered that every day I was dressed. So now I look at fashion. I don't know how well I'm dressed, but at least now it interests me.

Why do you think fashion translates so well to film?

I think it's very particular. There are films that were done in the '80s where they talk about fashion, but if you look at them today, they're disasters. But this is a man who did haute couture and that's really something that is very elite and particular, and transgresses all the ages. It's in a very particular, top tier category.

How do you feel about that top tier elite in fashion and how Yves Saint Laurent was the designer who pioneered pret a porter?

He was committed to also having a social impact, and he was an artist who was somewhat disconnected from reality, so he actually thought that in making ready to wear available in boutiques that everybody, even students, could go buy themselves something... even though it was still out of the price range of most people.

Was there a piece in the auction that really stood out to you; that you absolutely coveted?

All of them!

Not one in particular?

No, no, it's too hard. It's as if you ask a man or a woman, what would want if you were on a desert island? Well I don't know, a boat?

L'Amour Fou opens today in New York and is playing at the IFC Center and the Paris Theatre.

Pictured above: A still from the film; Pierre Bergé and Pierre Thoretton at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere.