Inception actor Tom Hardy is the official ambassador for Jo Malone London’s new Cypress & Grapevine cologne, a fresh and woody fragrance with notes of sensual amber and its namesake ingredients. For the launch, Hardy recruited his father, Chips Hardy, and director Edward Berger to produce a film championing London’s “idiosyncrasies, dichotomies and quirks.”

The cinematic visual is set on the dark streets of London, where Hardy notes that a “beautiful mix” of people encounter one another on an average evening. The script, written by Chips, echoes the scene’s sentiment: “London life is all about living with differences,” Hardy says in the opening, before an eclectic shot list shows a woman sipping on a milkshake, an older man waiting for transportation, a silver-suited dancer performing and a florist making deliveries in the rain.

“The opposites that attract, the riddles, the paradoxes, the exceptional and the contradictory: they’re part of who we are,” the actor narrates over sweeping views of the English capital before the film cuts to the fragrance.

 

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“We had this enormous privilege of being almost let loose on London to try and convey that feeling of freedom and complexity in the city,” said Hardy. “This sense of place where everyone, regardless of their differences, contributes to the city’s life. If you walk through a London park or take a night bus, the people you see next to each other typically neither look the same nor are doing the same thing. If you look at London as a matrix, you will always see a mix of unlikely things going on.”

He added, “Our hope is for the audience to come away with a liberating feeling, a sense of ‘what it is to be a Londoner.’ A feeling they could associate with the brand.” See the campaign above, and shop Jo Malone’s Cypress & Grapevine cologne on the label’s webstore for $225 USD.