
As Aboah approaches Rocky no one moves, with one exception Aboah’s eyes move as she scans the room. There is a sequence that shows the woman sleeping, and in the last shot she blinks several times. In La Jetée, there is only a single shot that is film rather than photography – it’s about six seconds and often goes unnoticed. Aside from the obvious reasons, there is a subtle homage to La Jetée that links her with the original character. In “Sundress”, the roles are more ambiguous. The American film Seven Monkeys was inspired by La Jetée and follows the same plot. The murder takes place in front of the man as a child, searing the image into his mind and ultimately giving him the ability to travel in time to find the woman, creating an infinite loop. An agent follows him through time and murders him. His mission thus completed, his captors plan on killing him, but he travels back in time to see his lover one last time. Eventually, he works up the skills to travel to the future and bring back an energy source to restart society. He meets a woman in the past and they have an unusual transient relationship.

It tells the story of a French POW in a post WWIII world who travels through time to save humanity. La Jetée is almost exclusively still photography with narration over it. The twist comes once she returns to her current boyfriend, who is none other than A$AP Rocky. This spurns her to follow him into a club and shoot him, thus creating an explosion of shared memories. As she walks down the street with her new man, she notices someone across the street who mysteriously turns into Rocky. AnalysisĪ$AP Rocky takes a back seat in the music video for “Sundress” as British artist and model Kesewa Aboah takes center stage, portraying Rocky’s ex.

This European quality has been characteristic of Rocky’s style since Testing, as can be seen in the fusion of New York and London styles in “Praise da Lord”, the video for “Potato Salad” in front of the Eiffel Tower, and his work with Dior. It’s likely that the video was filmed in the UK. Lebon is a British director, as is the protagonist and most of the film crew. The music video was directed by Frank Lebon, who has created equally experimental and visually rich music videos for artists like James Blake and King Krule. Released on November 20, 2018, “Sundress” was the first single A$AP Rocky released after his album Testing earlier that year.
