Review:
‘Dior and I,’ a Documentary That Peers Into a Storied Fashion
House
Dior
and I
By A. O. SCOTTAPRIL
9, 2015 /
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/10/movies/review-dior-and-i-a-documentary-that-peers-into-a-storied-fashion-house.html?_r=0
An elegant and
captivating piece of corporate promotion in the guise of a
documentary, Frédéric Tcheng’s “Dior and I” unfolds like an
episode of “Project Runway” with better clothes and bigger
budgets, or perhaps a Christopher Guest movie without a sense of
humor. There are some amusing moments, to be sure, and some touching
ones as well, but the film is less interested in ideas or emotions
than in illusions. It produces an aura of suspense without a sense of
real risk, and offers devotees of fashion an appealing, shallow
fantasy of inside knowledge.
The designer with
members of his couture team, referred to as the “petites mains,”
and the premières who head the ateliers, Florence Chehet (right, in
black) and Monique Bailly (left, in black).Inside Raf Simons’s
HouseAPRIL 9, 2015
Early and late, Mr.
Tcheng summons the specter of Christian Dior, who appears in archival
footage accompanied by passages from his memoir (read by the poet
Omar Berrada) that reflect on his double identity as an ordinary
provincial Frenchman and as the name above the door of a storied
Paris fashion house. Dior, whose 1947 New Look created some of the
most enduring iconography of modern femininity, is invoked as a
friendly ghost haunting the workshops and showrooms of his maison de
couture, and as a benevolent patriarch devoted, above all, to the
elegance of women. In 2012, when most of the film takes place, Dior’s
legacy has been placed in the hands of Raf Simons, a Belgian designer
recently hired from Jil Sander.
Mr. Simons, Dior’s
new artistic director, arrives in an atmosphere of nervous
expectation, with just eight weeks to produce a couture collection to
be shown at Paris Fashion Week. Best known for his men’s wear, he
has a reputation as a minimalist — a characterization he disputes —
that potentially makes him an odd fit with the company’s tradition
of tasteful luxury. Introducing Mr. Simons to the white-coated staff
of the workshops where the clothes will be made, his boss notes with
evident mixed feelings that the house is “modernizing.” Mr.
Simons, who favors dark sweaters and open-necked shirts over silk
ties and elegantly cut suits, also prefers to be addressed by his
first name.
“Dior and I” is
itself a sign of the times, in which transparency is the new
mystique. An audience that once might have savored the mysteries of
craft now feasts on the spectacle of process. We demand to see how
the sausages — or in this case the dresses, but also the dances,
the plays and the movies themselves — are made.
A documentary style
has arisen to answer this hunger that splits the difference between
cinéma vérité and reality television, engendering films that often
feel like CliffsNotes versions of Frederick Wiseman’s dense, slow
moving institutional studies. Like “Ballet 422,” Jody Lee Lipes’s
recent film about the choreographer Justin Peck, “Dior and I”
generates momentum and interest by showing deadline-driven creative
work. In both cases, there is a counterpoint of individual vision and
collaborative labor. Mr. Simons, assisted by his longtime
collaborator Pieter Mulier, delves into contemporary art and Dior’s
history in search of inspiration.
Shy, morose and
unable to speak French, Mr. Simons sometimes has trouble
communicating with the women who run the workshops, who view him with
skepticism. The two premières, Florence Chehet and Monique Bailly,
who preside over teams of white-coated cutters and seamstresses (one
for dresses, the other for suits), are by far the most fascinating
figures in “Dior and I.” They are a study in temperamental
contrasts — Ms. Chehet warm and bubbly, Ms. Bailly anxious and
astringent — and also exemplars of loyal service and artisanal
pride.
Ultimately, though,
they are treated with condescension, by the attention-seeking,
hype-driven industry that employs them and by a film that
uncritically embraces the values of that industry. Access to an
institution like the house of Dior is a rare and precious thing, and
Mr. Tcheng has paid for it with a flattering portrait dressed up to
look like cleareyed scrutiny. The emperor’s clothes are beautiful,
as you always knew they would be.
Dior and I
Opens on Friday
Written and directed
by Frédéric Tcheng; director of photography, Gilles Piquard; edited
by Julio C. Perez IV and Mr. Tcheng; music by Ha-Yang Kim; produced
by Mr. Tcheng and Guillaume de Roquemaurel; released by the Orchard.
In French, English and Flemish, with English subtitles. Running time:
1 hour 29 minutes. This film is not rated.
‘Dior
and I’ Review: Sartorial Sprint
A
documentary tracks the new artistic director of the House of Dior as
he creates his debut collection in only eight weeks.
By JOE MORGENSTERN
Updated April 17,
2015 2:15 p.m. ET /
http://www.wsj.com/articles/dior-and-i-review-sartorial-sprint-1429210425
Screenwriters often
heighten the drama of fiction films by equipping their plots with
ticking clocks—only so many minutes, hours or days to do such and
such before all hell breaks loose. In the fine documentary feature
“Dior and I,” a countdown clock is set for eight weeks at the
beginning of 2012. That was the startlingly short stretch of time
allotted to Raf Simons, the House of Dior’s new artistic director,
for the creation of his debut collection, after which, it was hoped,
his vision of fashion heaven would open its floral gates. Frédéric
Tcheng’s film tracks the collection’s genesis and development
with unconcealed admiration—this is hardly the anatomy of a
flop—but with a reporter’s sharp eye for detail, and a
playwright’s appreciation for suspense. The drama of getting new
dresses on the runway turns out to be transfixing, while the hero
redefines the notion of intense.
As well he might.
Mr. Simons, a Belgian designer previously noted for a minimalist
menswear line, had no way of knowing if the Dior atelier could do his
bidding under such pressure, notwithstanding the superlative skills
of its seamstresses. And they had no way of knowing if their new
leader would make demands they couldn’t meet. (He did, but they met
them all the same.) “Dior and I,” which uses a cleverly truncated
origin story to invoke the House of Dior’s founder, Christian Dior,
is a fascinating procedural with a fitting climax. Stunning models
wearing Mr. Simon’s gorgeous clothes slouch their stuff during an
opulent show in a Parisian mansion whose walls and doors have been
covered with tens of thousands of fresh flowers. Busby Berkeley
couldn’t have done better.
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