CATWALK
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
In the spring and fall of each year the major
fashion designers preview their collections. This
is one model's journey through the three weeks of
Milan, Paris, and New York.
-Opening Credit
Last year there was a much better documentary called UNZIPPED that focused in on the marvelous and naturally funny fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. This year we have a documentary called CATWALK that follows supermodel Christy Turlington through her paces. It even includes some scenes with Mizrahi. Cinematographer Robert Leacock takes his first stab at directing, and his inexperience shows. His approach to directing is just to shoot a lot of film and then assemble it later in the cutting room. This movie has no visible construction and is merely an assemblage of random pieces of film. On the good side, if you can ignore the amateurism documentary style, the fashion industry is always a weird and fascinating world to visit.
Beside Christy, we get to meet her friends in the modeling profession, especially Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss. If these names do not mean a lot to you, perhaps you don't subscribe to the right magazines. Although I saw UNZIPPED as well as every episode of "The House of Eliott," I found I learned some from watching CATWALK. Most of all, I found out how divorced from reality these people seem to be. Remember they are selling clothes, which is something we all purchase and wear, but most of their collections seem destined for some other planet. Almost all of them border on self-parody.
To be fair, a few of the gowns are quite lovely, but most are not, and the makeup and hairdos these models are forced to wear are frequently atrocious. One time, for example, they had to wear about 3 feet of false hair on the their heads. It had roughly the shape of a pagoda and had enough hairspray on it to withstand a hurricane force wind.
The documentary was done by letting the camera roll and recording what happened. There is no narration nor any attempt at a theme. Back in the cutting room, they arranged the film strips in order and perhaps threw some away. Given they kept an uninteresting sequence where the camera was dropped, and we toured the floor, perhaps there was no editing, just splicing. Unless you follow the fashion world closely, you will probably be just as confused as I was as to who was who, and what they were talking about. Sometimes the camera would start rolling in the middle of a conversation, and without the context what they were saying little sense.
If you've ever wondered what is the value in a million dollar model, the movie answers the question. Valentino says, "You can't always tell at a good collection what a model does, but you sure can at a bad one. You put a gunnysack or galoshes on Naomi, and you understand why a model gets paid." In sharp contrast to the models, the fashion designers who come on stage at the end of the unveiling of their collections are almost always poorly dressed. It is almost as if they are trying to look like slobs to show their independence of the fashion industry that makes them so wealthy.
In some of the scenes the designers reflect on other designers. Andre leon Talley says of famous designer John Galliano's collections that, "He's not making clothes for women who work. He is making clothes for women who want to be women." In other scenes, the models reflect on themselves. Kate Moss, talking of their long breaks between runway walks says, "We have plenty of empty time to think. That is why we are so smart." This film showed no evidence of this occurring. Most of the models seemed to be on a constant lark without a care or a thought in the world.
Since the show is mainly visuals with snippets of conversation, it forces you to look at the models more and listen to the music. The models have a definite homogeneity to them. They all had big lips, big eyes, ultrasmooth skin, thin shapes, and small noses. This reminded me of the recent Newsweek article on the "Science of Beauty." Finally, the music was heavy on the classical like Beethoven's Ode to Joy so I found this part quite pleasurable.
CATWALK runs 1:34. The runway scenes are in color, but the rest of the film is shot in low contrast black and white. It is not rated but would probably get an R rating for its couple of uses of the F word. Actually, it is a film with very brief nudity, no sex, no violence, and mainly very mild language so I think kids as young as 10 could go. The most offensive thing to me was the models' constant smoking. Although I enjoyed the show, the poor quality of the production is too much of an annoyance for me to be able to recommend it. I give it **.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: June 1, 1996
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews