versions: one for television, the other for the collector DVD Les Mots. The video shows the two singers in the middle of an ocean. Farmer, dressed in a short black skirt, and Seal, stripped to the waist, are on a wooden raft with a small sail and start to row. While Farmer stretches out on the raft, a storm begins to arrive, the wind picks up, the rain falls and lightning illuminates the sky. Seal, standing on the raft, loses his balance and falls into the water. Farmer tries to save, him giving him her hand, but without success. The night starts to fall and Farmer, now alone on the raft, lights a match and puts it out immediately. Inspiration and analysis The video contains some references to Shakespeare's Othello, but was mainly inspired by The Raft of the Medusa, a 1918 Théodore Géricault painting. Indeed, "the main colors of the video are similar to that in the painting: yellow, sunset, dark, warning of misfortunes. The anatomy of the two singers is filmed with realism and precision (details on the bodies' parts, focus on the grains of skin) and may refer to those of the shipwreckeds in the painting. Finally, the replicas of the raft and the sailing are very resembling". According to Instant-Mag, "the video "Les Mots" – without real screenplay, but rather playing on the aesthetics of colors and the sensual bodies filmed – can be appreciated on two levels: the first, metaphorical (...), refers to the flow of life, its turmoil, its despair, its choices. The lovers are (...) in the "same boat", they "row". When Seal fell in the water, Mylène Farmer doesn't help or can't help him, all interpretations are free. The end of the video may also symbolize the grief, the loss and its ambivalence: Farmer lights a flame, then blows it out, master of her own destiny and emotions." The journalist Caroline Bee considers the video deals with "the world of dream, with the ocean as a metaphor for life: the turmoil and the fullness, the danger and the calm." Critical reception Reviews "Les Mots" was generally very well received by the public, but was moderately appreciated by Farmer's fans because of its lack of innovation. For example, the biographer Bernard Violet says that "Les Mots" appears to be a typical Farmer's ballad, with a dark romanticism. According to the author Erwan Chuberre,