If the standard Hommage perpetual calendar represents Roger Dubuis's commitment to the grand complication in its most classical form, the bi-retrograde variant elevates that commitment into a demonstration of genuine mechanical ingenuity. The bi-retrograde perpetual calendar, governed by Calibre 5771, replaces the conventional circular sweep of the calendar indications with two retrograde displays that travel across the dial in a linear arc before snapping instantaneously back to their starting position, a mechanism requiring considerably greater complexity than the standard perpetual and one that no manufacture of modest size could produce without the most rigorous movement architecture. The visual effect is immediate and dramatic, the retrograde hands animating the dial in a manner that no conventional calendar display can replicate.
The case in 18-karat pink gold, numbered 11, with its diameter of 37mm, dates to the 1990s and belongs to the earliest stratum of the bi-retrograde Hommage's production history, a period during which the manufacture was still working at the smallest scale and finishing each movement with an attention to individual detail that later volume made progressively less achievable. The warm chromatic quality of the pink gold case against the black dial creates a visual contrast of considerable sophistication, the depth of the lacquered ground lending the retrograde indications an immediacy and legibility that the pale dial of the white gold variant deliberately foregoes.