Lagerfeld confidential is the title of this documentary, and I mused on its overt reference to, well, L.A. Confidential: can it be that fashion is the regime where a new noir sensibility can be glanced at, or through? It sounds ridiculous, yet there is a precise point I want to make.
Let's take wikipedia's definition of the genre: "Stylish crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation." The first part may sound campy, though the second part makes what we witness on the screen really fall in the category, albeit with a twist. Lagerfeld does not back off from questions that seem personal, or that deliver his vision, a word on which he emphasizes and repeats some times. Some reviewers were mesmerized by that vision, and up to a certain point, myself included, it is only that Lagerfeld is permitted, given his position, to "be" mesmerizing. He does not have competition, and this is something I will return to. He corrects the interviewer/director when he goes into trying to ask elaborately, with detours a simple question about his homosexuality, and when did he first feel it. This is charming and straightforward. Later, when he says that he is no more a practitioner of sex,he reprimands the director for graphically rephrasing his avowal. That is well-said and shows prestance. It can also be completely artificial, not at all spontaneous, or truly confessional, as in the beginning when, splendidly, the director calls him in a friendly manner Karl (that is the first word we hear in the film), and he is everyday enough as not to respond immediately; and although we can sense it, and because we can sense it the magic augments, instead of diminishing. He really cannot be someone that counts on being accepted in terms of reality, a word he uses twice when discussing how close one can get to another person, and, the second time, when he adds that he wants to be someone glimpsed at, the film appropriately ends, leaving us with a whiff of something we barely scented, although we would like a full bite! But, even if it is completely premeditated as an endeavor of a film, it should be as it is.
Back to the film noir question: we see a lot of gorgeous interiors, models, jets, the easiness of transcontinental flights as if with a cab, food, attention, professional level or not, photos of his childhood, youth and early middle age,footage of his first collection for Chanel, all seething with elegance, aloofness, power, hypocrisy, money, insights and what you will, as befits a film noir attitude and atmosphere. OK, but is there something more than atmosphere? So, what are the two main characters featuring in a film noir? The femme fatale, of course, and the powerful man the hero, or anti-hero, confronts, in order to save and take her, usually shooting the powerful kingpin in the end. Is it not, to put it quickly, that Lagerfeld is the two, at the same time? And the femme fatale (although we just get a glimpse, in photo, of his signature fan), and a Caesar (as he was once termed). And yes, his own man, that is one we don't get through his art, how can it be that he assumes such more than grande dame airs without being effeminate or ridiculous, but steely, unaffected. Perhaps it is what he says, seriously and honestly, I think, that he is hardworking, but not serious.
It is only now that a film, or documentary, like this could be made. He has no antagonism, that is, to put it bluntly, YSL is dead. His oracular-casual manner would not be possible, or have the same empowering effect, were his once rival alive. Having once read YSL's biography, where Lagerfeld's scathing, jealous remarks were printed, thus showing, well, simply, a humane (and as it goes on such occasions and personalities, unfortunate)portrayal,it makes the film's transparency somewhat one-sided, even for the complexities of surface effects. I don't pass judgement. I would even say that, having seen the footage of his first Chanel collection, I was amazed at how not at all dated and how elegant his work still is. I cannot say that for most of YSL's 80's collections, that are bizarrely dated and inspired at the same time. Hence, some of the bitterness may not seem outreached, even though I cannot, on the other hand, sympathize with his judgement on his fellow worker. But perhaps it is just this, that they were not just workers, one does not simply works for fashion, as Lagerfeld states matter-of-fact at some point, but being visionary, you don't disavow rivalry. That may seem trivial, yet I think is crucial foregrounding, for we are not dealing with, simply (whatever this means), film, or documentation, or someone's portrait, but with something that in a way involves some other aspects of history, simultaneous or earlier, in order to appreciate what, in the end, escapes itself: no, Lagerfeld seems to say constantly, forget your preconceptions, there is nothing but surface here, and, the hard thing is, surface is a deadly serious matter: take it or leave it! But in order to do this, history cannot just be an earlier photo of oneself, unless it is like shots of a handsome youth, with a gratuitous edge, early one morning.
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