blanche-2 "Valentino: The Last Emperor" is an interesting look at the Valentino empire and the changing times in which it exists. It follows Valentino and his partner in life and work, Giancarlo Giametti, as they prepare for a show and later, Valentino's 45 anniversary as a designer.The fluff stuff first - the fashions are amazing. Valentino designs a beautiful white gown at one point, and we watch his critique of the finished product, and whether or not to add sequins and extra panels. We also see some of the people for whom he has designed over the years: Princess Diana, Jacqueline Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, and Gwyneth Paltrow, to name only a few. And we see a lot of his signature red gowns. Also, as a second comment on the fluff, Valentino, Giametti and their many pug dogs live like kings, with magnificent homes everywhere!The more serious undertone in this documentary is the changing world of fashion and what has become the business of fashion. There are interviews throughout about this - the world today is about the bottom line, which means scents, designer handbags, and other accessories. The couture isn't the big moneymaker, but it is what Valentino has devoted his life to. As an artist who is proud of his work and committed to it, we see increasingly that the businessmen are less interested in Valentino the artist and more interested in Valentino the brand. It's a world he no longer belongs in.The best parts of this film for me were the times when Valentino was watching the gowns on the models and making decisions on changes - truly the artist at work. That kind of devotion to detail is so rare today. It was a joy to watch.You probably won't learn much about the man himself here, but you will learn something about his work -- and as an artist in the truest sense, that is Valentino's true essence.

rgcustomer Part of the job of a documentary filmmaker is to draw in an audience that might not come pre-programmed with knowledge about the subject, and then educate them about that subject. This documentary fails completely at that. I learned a lot more from the Wikipedia page about Valentino.This purports to tell the life of Valentino Garavani, a man frankly I had never heard of in my life. The silent film actor Rudolph Valentino is more famous. So, do we really learn about his childhood, his education, his influences? Except for a small statement about seeing women on the silver screen when he was 13, not really.Do we learn much of anything about the man, the business, the world it all happens in? No. You would think that if fashion is important in some way, that might be explained. You would think that if he is "the last emperor" that you might explain who the other emperors were and why nobody else is an emperor now.For crying out loud, we hardly even got a good look at any of his history of work.I couldn't tell if I was watching some sort of anaesthetized special of Absolutely Fabulous, or Zoolander, or The Osbournes with all the fun sucked out.The main things I learned: (1) it's apparently possible to become an emperor of fashion (even a gay emperor) without designing anything of any note for men, despite the desperate need for ANYTHING new in men's clothing (2) female fashion models have nice breasts, but are otherwise the most hideous examples of the human form, especially when they start "walking". It's no wonder these clothes won't fit anyone else; they're designed for limping space aliens.(3) apparently the fashion world is entirely ignorant that "triumph of the will" is a Nazi reference.So maybe you already know this Valentino, and maybe you enjoy a peek at the rather dull and arrogant life he leads. Then this is for you. But not for me.

Chad Shiira The priceless opportunity to crash an artist's inner sanctum and watch him at work is the considerable appeal of this documentary, whose name it appropriates, of course, from the Bernardo Bertolucci-directed Academy Award-winning film about the end of the Qing Empire in feudal China. "Valentino: The Last Emperor" allows the viewer a peak into the rarefied world of "haute coutre", where the fashion designer's latest crisis, sequins or no sequins for his latest creation, is in the process of being resolved. In a crowded room, surrounded by his minions, a typically angular model is reduced to a mannequin; her casual nudity no more titillating than a venerable nun's state of undress. The subject of the scene is that white gown, not the woman who occupies it. As she's being fitted, the model's downturned countenance of ennui de-eroticizes her nakedness. The room full of people, all tending to their appointed tasks, pay no mind to this woman in the buff, which orientates the viewer to see the model through Valentino's eyes. Perhaps a nipple ring would have destroyed the functional aspect of the model's bared breasts, but the prevailing context of her nudity blurs the male gaze, since the viewer has no corresponding stand-in within the diegesis to enjoy the female form in all its purity. The opportunities to see a naked woman of film are endless. The quotidian visage of the model deflects attention away from her; she's not in the seducing mood; she's working, and onto her clothes. To Valentino's credit, the white gown that forms around the model's diaphanous body makes her look even more desirable than the pure state she achieves through the rigorous denial of normal caloric sustenance. The nude dress upstages the nude woman. The dress does the seducing. The viewer wants that dress; the dress is the eye candy, in this instance. Finally, the emperor decrees: Let there be sequins. And we were there to see an icon put the finishing touches on his latest masterpiece. Alas, "Valentino: The Last Emperor" will irk those who can't relate, or pretend to sympathize with the problems of the rich. But wealth is beside the point in Valentino's case. Stripped of its luxurious trappings, the fashion designer's trials and tribulations should be remarkably relatable to anybody who ever created a work of art, and saw their creative control suddenly taken away from them.

Chris Knipp 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.