Some sequins can’t hurt.
— Valentino Garavani
“I only remember the things I want to remember.” Smiling faintly, Valentino Garavani thus inoculates himself from the biographical documentary around him. Matt Tyrnauer’s much-praised film, screening 11 January, as part of Stranger Than Fiction’s Winter Pre-Season Special program (and available on DVD), follows the designer during his last year heading the Valentino Fashion Group. As he ponders stepping away from the empire he’s made, Valentino reveals the mix of flamboyance and steel that has made him a force in the industry for 45 years.
By way of explaining his longevity, the film observes as well the relationship between Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti, the longtime partnership Tyrnauer profiled in a 2004 Vanity Fair article. “To be with Valentino,” Giammetti says, “as a friend, as a lover, as an employee, is a bit the same. You need a lot of patience.” Indeed, the film illustrates as the duo prepares for 2006’s Spring Summer Paris Collection, and then for the following year’s Valentino Retrospective in Rome. If Valentino is predictably imperious, Giammetti is surely patient — as well as wily, irritated, and resourceful. The documentary looks at how their success results from combined personalities and ambitions, suggesting that whether they clash or agree on any particular detail, they need one another to be themselves.
As they reminisce here, walking along the Via Veneto where they met at a café in 1960, the differences in their roles become clear. If Valentino is the celebrated diva and artist, Giammetti is the archivist, stager, and business mastermind. As Valentino describes his childhood to an interviewer (“I was dreaming about movie stars, dreaming about everything beautiful in the world. My mother said, ‘You are a dreamer, you always dream, dream, dream, about stupid things.’ I was always so attract [sic] to magazines, to films”), Giammetti makes the decision to sell the corporation, first to Matteo Marzotto, who in turn sells a 30% stake to Permira. For all the romance and history associated with the name Valentino (the film includes the expected Jackie Kennedy montage), its longevity is premised on Giammetti’s acute business sense. Expressing his own displeasure with increasing obsessions with “the bottom line,” Giammetti protects his partner: “Valentino is above control,” he insists. “Valentino is above partnership decisions. Valentino doesn’t care, Valentino does what he wants. Valentino is Valentino.”
The film pretty much goes along with this elucidation of the collaboration. On the one hand it finds great entertainment in their occasional disagreements (say, over the “sand” set design for the Paris show, that Valentino first deems “ridiculous” then adores, just as Giammetti anticipates he will). On another, it underscores their deep affection and mutual respect, articulated most plainly by Giammetti. Watching the desert set under construction, Giammetti says of his partner, “It doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t realize the work behind this business.” It’s a useful point to keep in mind, whether or not it’s for show or for real (actually, these realms are mostly the same in “this business”). As much as Giammetti knows how to get at Valentino (“Your belly is showing,” he snipes during an argument), his shielding of his partner from diurnal minutiae, is a matter of following his lead: “Valentino is very protective of himself,” Giammetti says, “He doesn’t like to confide in anyone. Ever. Not even friends. Few people know his doubts, his fears, his weaknesses. Therefore, he has this extraordinary control.”
You see evidence of this control in scenes where Valentino directs the sewing of a new gown, instructing head seamstress Antonietta de Angelis as to how many sequins to add (by hand, of course), congratulating her team on the magnificent result (“Frankly, I don’t dislike it”), and then later, defending his design against Giammetti’s opinion that the gown seems to be “missing” strips of fabric. “You’re a pain in the ass,” he advises Giammetti, who nods and moves on to the next project. “I left two holes on purpose,” Valentino adds, “Not to have strips all around.” His last word is almost irrelevant by the time he speaks it.
If The Last Emperor features the usual fashion iconography — the slow-motioned models on catwalks, the faux commentary in a pop song (in this case, Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes”), the red carpet arrivals (Gwyneth Paltrow, Joan Collins, Karl Lagerfeld), it also offers a few images that are more telling, focused on the filmmaking process as part of the making of Valentino the Brand and Business. The production is ongoing, the documentary is less revelatory than conventional: yes, it notes, fashion people are a breed unto themselves. If Valentino is pompous and self-indulgent at 75, he is also hardworking, charming, and attractively vulnerable, properly fond of his five pugs. (He’s also in great shape, demonstrated when he speeds down the slopes at Gstaad.)
The movie includes a couple of scenes indicating its own part in the promotion of the Valentino legend. It seems oddly candid and somehow revealing when the usually elegant and willing subject briefly resists the documentation. He has a little fit just before a show, walking to the end of a hallway, away from Tyrnauer’s crew, muttering, “That camera, if it keeps screwing around, I’m out of the film.” Just what is revealed here is not so clear: Valentino can be stubborn and anxious, just as he can also be professional and assured. When he offers a public thank you to Giammetti (“My partner from the very beginning, who stayed by my side all these years”), the camera cuts from one close-up to the other, both men moved and also aware that they are on camera being moved.