Review
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
When: Friday, 9:15 p.m.
Where: Empire Capitol 6
Rating: Four stars
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You don’t need to have a passion for fashion to appreciate this lively, mesmerizing and affectionate portrait of the late Diana Vreeland, the fabulously candid and witty Paris-born glamour icon best known for her legendary gigs as fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and editor-in-chief of Vogue. This illuminating documentary is “absolutely divine,” to use a phrase favoured by the eminently quotable, unrepentant trend-setter, who discovered “Betty” Bacall and famously encouraged future stars such as Twiggy, Barbra Streisand and Mick Jagger (“Mmmm … those lips”) to turn their perceived imperfections into fashion assets. Dozens of actors, designers, photogaphers, former models and assistants, including Ali McGraw, Lauren Hutton, Marisa Berenson, Givenchy, Calvin Klein, Anjelica Huston and Joel Schumacher, reminisce and pontificate about the taste-maker’s enduring impact. Their colourful testimony is intercut with taped audio footage of the self-mythologizing visionary herself, commenting on everything from the birth of the bikini (“It was the biggest thing since the atom bomb”) to Hitler’s moustache (“It was just wrong”), with matching black-and-white footage, as well as flashbacks to entertaining tête-à-têtes with broadcast legends from Dick Cavett to Diane Sawyer. Actors also voice material from the transcript of conversations the influential fashion doyenne had with friend and fellow cultural icon George Plimpton for her biography D.V. As directed by the subject’s granddaughter-in-law Lisa Immordino Vreeland, this is a compulsively watchable, if obviously selective, tribute to the outlandishly autocratic diva, whose bon mots — from “Pink is the navy blue of India” to “The best thing about London is Paris” — never wear out their welcome. Like her own life, this valentine to Vreeland is anything but boring.
— Michael D. Reid
© Copyright 2013
