First Hit: If you want to watch an interesting film about a delicate ego, watch this one. If you want to know how he came up with his fashion designs, you won’t find it here.
I was disappointed with this film because it provided very little insight to the complexities of how Valentino came up with his designs which gained a worldwide following.
The film follows Valentino around in the last year of his 50 year career and sets up for an extravaganza retrospective show in Rome. What the film does do is give you a deeper glimpse into his long time relationship with Giancarlo Giammetti, who was his lover, friend, and able business partner who navigated Valentino’s design career.
We get a little glimpse of the process of how his creations are made, by exchanges between Valentino, his longtime seamstress and her assistants. We see some scenes of fittings, changes to the original designs, but nothing concrete about where his designs came from.
There are three scenes of him drawing some design sketches and that’s it.
The overall execution of this film was very good and even for this type of documentary. The exciting parts came with the filming of occasional outbursts of temper, orders to quit filming, and hand shoves moving the camera lens out of the way.
Overall: I didn’t really think this film did Valentino the designer any justice, but it did give the audience a full dose of his ego.