READY TO WEAR
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1995 Frank Maloney
READY TO WEAR (PRET-A-PORTER) is a film produced and directed by Robert Altman. It was written by Altman and Barbara Shulgasser. The cast includes Kim Basinger, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Rea, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Whitaker Forest, Sally Kellerman, Anouk Aimee, Linda Hunt, Tracey Ullman, Lauren Bacall, Danny Aiello, Tom Novembre, Lili Taylor, Jean-Pierre Cassall, Michel Blanc, Lyle Lovett, Teri Garr, Jean Rochefort, Rupert Everett, and many celebrity cameos. Rated R for nudity. 132 minutes.
READY TO WEAR may be the most misunderstood film of 1994. Most reviews have called it a satire, a parody, an attack on the fashion industry. Whatever Altman's intentions, the resulting film--which had its original title translated from French to English and had nearly an hour of its original running time cut, both at the last minute, by spineless marketeers--is not an attack, but a paean to and a celebration of the human condition. It is joyful, uplifting, amazing in its deep compassion and wise understanding of what being human is all about. Like Walt Kelly's Pogo (or was it Porky Pine?) Altman says "don't take life so seriously, son, it ain't permanent anyhow." Or Kelly's even more famous, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
READY TO WEAR is no more an attack on fashion than THE PLAYER was an attack on the film industry; both films hold an artifact of our shared culture up to the light but only so we can marvel at this absurd toy which so reflects our own absurdity. Does anyone doubt that Altman loves the flicks after seeing THE PLAYER?
Fashion, with all its absurdity, contradiction, and extremism, is a human invention and as such stands as an illuminating symbol of all human lives, all human inventions. And the last fashion show in the film is the best of all, full of dignity and hopefulness, as bold and touching a statement of optimism as I've seen in years. A review quoted in the display ads for this film spoils this moment somewhat, but take it from me that that spoiler misses this point by as wide a mark as virtually all other comments I've seen about the film.
The film moves me over and over again. Just seeing Sophia Loren at age 60 more beautiful and magnificent than ever doing a loving strip tease for her greatest co-star, Marcello Mastroianni, here reunited on the screen for the first time since the late 70s; the strip tease itself is an homage to another such scene in their great film YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW (1964), the results being appropriate different thanks to the intervening three decades. (Other older great beauties and great women, still by no means superannuated, film are used also in the Altman film to counter the almost childish models and fashion's and culture's love of youth--beauties such as Anouk Aimee and Lauren Bacall and a particularly wonderful Sally Kellerman who manages to recall her role as Hotlips Hoolihan in Altman's M*A*S*H in one moment of self-exposure.)
Another great delight in READY TO WEAR is Kim Basinger, never before much of a favorite of mine, who here creates the memorable Kitty Potter, a cable-TV fashion reporter with a Texas accent and sorority-girl gestures. Kitty knows nothing that isn't written on her cue cards, but at the end she at least knows that she will never understand "this bullshit," as she says. Her brevet replacement does understand and helps us do so, too. But to say much about that here would be to give away one of the major moments of the film.
Also to be recommended is the team of Julia Roberts (another perennial no-show on my list of favorite Hollywood women) and Tim Robbins. They are funny enough to get a film of their own together. The situation that throws them together and keeps them together is a little improbable, all the way round, but it provides such good clean fun that one ought not to complain too loudly.
Forest Whitaker, Tom Novembre, and Richard E. Grant are three gay designers and particularly Whitaker and Grant go way over the top. Normally, I would probably be less sanguine about the fops and faggots routine, but here it is leavened by an opportunity to see beneath the posing and affectation for a moment or two. In addition, we have the real-life designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, he of the many piercings, doing interviews and being altogether wonderful, balancing somewhat the actors' extremism.
On the other hand Stephen Rea is the perfect little shit as the hot Irish fashion photographer who seems determined for some reason to destroy his career; perhaps the rest of the part was lost on the cutting room floor, as the saying goes. And perhaps Altman will give us a director's cut on video later so we can see all the treasures thrown away in the name of marketing.
For me, the visual appeal of the film was very high indeed. The fashions are great fun and in some cases really exciting, although the best dressed woman in the film is Loren with vintage haute couture and vast hats right out of Fellini, who always loved a good fashion show and a really big hat. The Paris locations are wonderful, too. It is the appeal of the fashions that for me is one of the signs that READY TO WEAR is not the vicious satire it is being called by the professional reviewers. Of course, the fashions are often ridiculous, but they are always creative and amusing, and so very human.
There are many treasures here--the canine fashion show, for example, and the transvestites' dinner party--indeed, even after seeing the film twice in one day, I was still grinning through it all, laughing out loud occasionally (as when, in Kitty Potter's words, Loren is being attended in a fainting spell by "two fashion doctors," and leaving the theater moved and touched and near to tears of happiness.
Let me be one of the few who recommend READY TO WEAR (PRET-A-PORTER) to you. It is worth any price of admission you must pay and it will repay you over and over again.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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