Highly Overrated But Still Good

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The fly-on-the-wall documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor was just released in Canada yesterday and it was mesmerizing! The film can induce laughter and tears but its insider expose of the fashion business is pure privilege for the viewer.Valentino Garavani and his longtime companion and business partner Giancarlo Giammetti are products of La Dolce Vita - the early 60s in Italy when all things Italian, from Vespas and Pucci to Sophia Loren and Fellini, were the definition of chic. At the height of this second Italian Renaissance Valentino emerged as a couturier, becoming internationally known when he made Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress for her marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968. For the next thirty years the company grew, expanding into ready to wear, accessories, and licensing, until 1998 when the company was sold for 300 million. Four years later, the company was resold, bringing Matteo Marzotto, a handsome, shrewd businessman into the picture, who at times is an antagonist to Valentino and Giancarlo.This film captures 2006/07, before Valentino, age 75, decided to retire after celebrating his 45th year in fashion. The film also captures the death of couture, as it was defined in the 1950s by couturiers who had been trained by masters of dressmaking from the 1920s; Lagerfeld quietly whispers into Valentino's ear, thinking the microphone can not capture his words, 'You and I are the last two… everyone else makes rags.' This may sound egotistical, but its not far from the truth. Couturiers are a dying breed - in their place are designers, who make their living by branding accessories and scents while creating unwearable over-the-top creations intended as marketing opportunities for the fashion media.This film also wryly captures the absurdity of fashion; a Fellini soundtrack plays while a string of fashion caricatures arrive at the finale dinner, from Donatella Versace and her perma-tanned skin and white-blonde hair to Karl Lagerfeld in his signature three inch tall collar and leather pants, to fan fluttering three hundred and fifty pound Andre Leon Talley. Valentino's fashion world is full of extraordinary characters; aging European princesses with bosoms bulging over their couture necklines ride on the back of Vespas like its still 1962, while cut throat businessmen make deals behind the guise of flirting smiles for the camera. Valentino tries to appear calm and in control but easily succumbs to childish temper tantrums, befitting his artistic temperament, while Giancarlo, who yields more authority over Valentino than anyone knows, tries to keep everything on an even keel.This film is worth seeing more than once and the DVD will definitely be making a permanent home in our library!

This documentary by 'Vanity Fair' correspondent Matt Tyrnauer tells two stories. First it depicts the extraordinarily long-lived life/business partnership of Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giametti. Second it shows the ravages of a changing world in which haute couture is falling into the hand of financiers and the exploiters of brand names. In the days of Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita', Valentino met Giancarlo in Rome on the Via Veneto--they differ about at which café it was--and the friendship, love affair, and business partnership that resulted led to the 45-year reign of the house of Valentino. During the year filmmaker Tyrnauer followed the partners, Valentino is both spectacularly celebrated--and chooses to resign. Bought by investors, his name now belongs to others. It is likely that the fabulous gowns all sewn by hand and covered with embroidery and sequins by a team of industrious and skillful women in Milan will no longer be made. And the whole fashion industry is changing from the top down. Compared to where it was in the grand old days of the Fifties, it now is far more huge and enormously more profitable. But the fabulous haute couture design paraded on runways, fashion's creative center, is fading in scale and importance, because the money isn't there to pay for it. Couture is bleeding away its exquisite heart to the pursuit of "market share" and money.In the days of his rise Valentino provided a whole wardrobe to Jacqueline Kennedy. And there were many others just as elegant and beautiful. His stated principle is that he gives women what they want and what they want is beauty. His style as a designer is supremely beautiful, accessible, classic--a little conventional (insofar as such craft and expense can be thought conventional). He awes and delights; he does not shock. Everything is sewn by hand. In the workshop where the women make his gowns, there was once a sewing machine, but nobody ever used it. The movie stars and the titled aristocrats still turn out for the fashion do's, but the fashions themselves, the most exquisite and luxurious of them, are facing gradual extinction.Matt Tyrnauer made this film in 2007; his timing was good to tell his two stories, the human one and the financial one. (The financial one undercuts and spoils the aesthetic one, but no matter; that is the subliminal message.) He captured Valentino in Rome and Paris where he has fabulous houses, in his private plane where his five pugs take up a double leather-cushioned seat, and Gstaad where (though 75) he skies downhill at breakneck speed, and on his large and streamlined yacht. We see Valentino's marvelous hand as he sketches instantly perfect designs on paper. We see the arguments over ruffles and sequins and the head seamstress berating her underlings for their incompetence when a row of stitches must be done all over. The film is not so long on detail and history but it is strong on atmosphere. And it captures the dressed-to-the-nines Italian elegance of the perfectly suited Giancarlo and Valentino and the grandeur of the runways (none grander than these) and the tension and expletives and superlatives of the fitting room.More important, Tyrnauer captured the ceremony in Paris where Valentino, never keen to admit debts to others, holds back sobs as he acknowledges, when made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, that he would never have won this medal nor had this glittering career without Giammetti forever at his side. The camera swerves breathlessly back and forth between the two men, collecting Valentino's gasps and Giancarlo's elegantly modest smile and nod of thanks. It is a great moment in the histories of fashion and of gay partnerships.Later, in Rome, the fashion house spends 200,000 euros on a fabulously beautiful and elegant celebration of the designer's career. At this point for several years interest in company has been bought, and there is a new business partner, Matteo Marzotto. Then a financial investor has gotten hold of a controlling interest, and Valentino's resignation decision came two months after the celebration. He was never any good at business. A man with a sense of humor, he confesses in public that he was always hopeless at everything else besides designing clothes.Valentino and Giancarlo are rarely apart, day and night. Giametti somewhat extravagantly declares that in 45 years he has only been away from Velentino for two months total. Tyrnauer has a moving target to deal with, shifting between places and from Italian to English to French in a moment. They are always on the move. Now and then the camera catches a choice moment of bickering. Velentino seems to object to pretty much anything he hasn't thought of himself, including a replaced ruffle, a desert background for a fashion show, a location for the Rome celebration, a choice of color. If it wasn't his idea, it sucks. He's often smiling, but his mouth is in a perpetual prune-y pout. Valentino thinks of himself as delivering decisions to Giancarlo, and often uses French to do so, though traded gibes about double chins or pot bellies or too dark a tan are tossed off in Italian. And there is much to amuse and to touch here. Or to gasp at: the Rome celebration is as breathtakingly gorgeous as any conspicuous display could ever be. Imagine having your life's work celebrated with fireworks over the Colosseum! In another way Tyrnauer's timing wasn't so good, however. After 'Unzipped' (1995), 'Project Runway' (2005 following), two searching films about the career and life of Yves Saint Laurent (2002), 'The Devil Wears Prada' (2006), and the recent down-market but detailed chronicle of a failed fashion house launch, 'Eleven Minutes'(2008), movie-goers know a good deal about the haute couture story, so many elements and scenes of 'Valentino' are 'vieux jeux' by now, even though those of us who are fascinated by wearable art and the world of chicness will have to see it anyway.

You already know you ought to watch out when a documentary's subtitle borders on pretentious, as in the case of Valentino: The Last Emperor, which shamelessly rips off Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-winning epic. Sure, it might have been an attempt on the director's part to give the film extra glamor, but it also makes the huge disappointment much harder to swallow: this film gets its wrong so badly it even makes Oliver Stone's flawed Alexander biopic look like Lawrence of Arabia in comparison.But maybe that's a little harsh. Maybe the hyperbolic title is justified, since the movie's subject matter, Italian designer Valentino Garavani (know only as Valentino to the entire world), is considered the single most important person in the fashion industry of the 20th century. The film aims to show the last days of his "empire" and the party he organized for his retirement, an event which was attended by nearly all the celebrities (mostly film stars) he has dressed over the years. We also get to see glimpses of his personal life, thanks to recollections of how he got started, images of him playing with his dogs and interviews with people such as his business (and life) partner Giancarlo Giammetti. All of this is meant to come together in a vast, respectful portrait of a living legend of sorts.Why doesn't this happen, then? Well, primarily because the documentary doesn't have a real ark. Aside from when it focuses on the party and its aftermath, the movie consists of a series of clips or interviews which have no coherent link between them. Perhaps this is deliberate, given some scenes try to capture Valentino's famous mood swings, but the depiction that emerges is as lifeless as the fashion king's face (the latter is due to excessive surgery). Throughout the film he speaks Italian, English and French, but fails to convey any real emotions in either language.In the end, though, the man himself isn't to blame. The problem lies with the director, Matt Tyrnauer, whose biggest defect is the fact that he isn't a filmmaker, but a Vanity Fair journalist. Because of this background, the film isn't as much a tribute as it is a clumsy attempt at sucking-up, which results in the sorry mess Tyrnauer tried to pass off as a proper documentary (how it managed to be selected at the Venice Film Festival, we'll probably never know). Not counting the stylish opening credits, there's absolutely nothing worth seeing here.4,5/10

The film is not so good, I 've to say. It' s a documentary but not really a well done documentary, considering the good one made for Armani by Scorzese or by Lagarfield for Chanel...or Sophia Coppola for Dolce e Gabbana....It's 'bad done' I would say. The title is MORE than PRETENTIOUS. Poor Bertolucci...Bad thing people who does not know humility... The director, Matt Tyrnauer, is not a director and you can well see it. But it seems he has not ideas as well. It' s a mess of situations with non sense. The plot, if we could call it in this way, is the persona of Valentino and his partner Giameto in private life, but it seems they are not spontaneous, that they want to appear in front of the camera not for their beautiful work but just to appear in front of the camera. It' s a little bit embarrassing to see a designer acting in this way instead of going on with his job. It seems he can' t live without being a celebrity even if his reality movie could make him looking a little bit ridiculous. To me awful movie.