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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.

This documentary follows legendary fashion designer Valentino Garavani from 2006 to his 45th anniversary show in 2007. Everybody suspects his long career is coming to a close and they keep asking him about retirement. Financial and business considerations are also forcing him to face that reality. He has longtime partner Giancarlo Giammetti, his countless supporters, and his tiny dogs. It's a movie for fashion and Valentino fans. The most compelling is Valentino working on the dress with his many associates, the half dozen older ladies working on the design, and the statuesque blonde walking back and forth. It's always nice to see someone using his brain to create something original. The rest is not that interesting and the business aspect provides no tension.

Director Matt Tyrnauer never could have known when making his new documentary "Valentino: The Last Emperor" that he'd first chronicle the demise of fashion's last true self-made couturier and then release it into a world where, as former Valentino Fashion Group president Matteo Marzotto (and the film's antagonist) recently declared flatly, "luxury is over." Resisting the reality-genre conventions a 21st Century first-timer might be tempted to devolve into in shaping events to fit a narrative arc, Tyrnauer simply lifts the curtain on Valentino's gorgeous, frantic, fragile universe and watches it collapse; a dying star, shining brightest as it implodes.

What began as an outgrowth of a feature story written by Tyrnauer at Vanity Fair, where he is Special Correspondent, "Valentino: The Last Emperor" vaults over similar documentary efforts that fell back on partial scripting (Madonna's 1991 "Truth or Dare") or the discomfiting exploitation of a soon-to-fail relationship (the 1995 Isaac Mizrahi doc "Unzipped," directed by Mizrahi's unseen/all-seeing boyfriend Douglas Keeve). The reasons for this success stem directly from the trust placed in Tyrnauer, who as part of the 2004 Vanity Fair piece effectively managed what Valentino's own PRs certainly could not: the news -- subsequently splashed across European broadsheets -- that Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino's multi-role partner, were gay and had been lovers for 12 years as part of their decades-long relationship.

Five years later, while Italian homosexuality remains a specifically complicated knot to unravel, a paradigm shift has occurred. The presupposition that the men are gay, as are the majority of their peers and male colleagues, is a mute presence in the film, while the expressive energy of the men's post-sexual relationship drives the film and their careers equally.

Despite their bickering, their constant manipulations and mutual interferences, and the unceasing Italianness of their relationship (in one priceless moment, Giammetti stops Valentino cold in the middle of berating his partner's design choices by telling him he has a belly), what makes the center of the film is their love of one another, their love of fighting one another, and their love of being slightly put-upon by the demands of the baroque splendor of their lives together; lives made together, for each other. Unable as part of their generation, as part of La Dolce Vita in the closet, unable to be the men they (or their families) might have wanted them to be, their passions manifested in the exquisite beauty of Valentino's oeuvre and the extensive wealth that Giammetti was able to amass for them from it. Enough beauty, wealth and fame on an international (Jackie, Uma, all of them in between) scale to live, as Giammetti astutely observes, "above."

Valentino is "above control, above partnership" and above, for most of his career, the closet. No wonder Valentino seems happy only when Tyrnauer shows him in the mountains in Gstaad, skiing -- above indeed -- informally dressed for once, alone and beckoning Giammetti to come to him from afar. Both men seem to know, semi-consciously, that separately neither man would have been able to achieve a tenth of what they've done as a couple. In what has rightly been termed their "love story," 1 + 1 = 1,000.

The film has had the bittersweet luck to have been present for the ascendancy of a new math, as European equity fund Permira makes successive hostile takeover plays for Valentino's eponymous house, a late-capitalism tsunami of Euros sweeping away Valentino and Giammetti on the eve of elaborate celebrations and the designer's swansong show. Profit margins through duty-free handbags and trading on Valentino's name are the only products of these harsh calculations, whose cold logic is revealed later to show no mercy to the mercenaries brought in to do Permira's bidding. Tyrnauer, whose deft cameraman is seemingly everywhere at once thanks to top-shelf editing, wryly shows how these backstage machinations among unspeakable grandeur serve to further compress the schedule and increase the opulence of Valentino's farewell and farewell collection. Here, the film spends as much time in the château with Joan Collins and the Comtesse de Ribes as it does tender, thoughtful time with the house's incredible team of harried and largely unsung seamstresses. Hand-stitching be damned, the new regime looms, and Valentino's house, the last of its kind, will soon float away like the ironically apt motif of the hot air balloon chosen for the final season. It rises, lingers beautifully, and inevitably floats out of reach. As Giammetti says in closing the celebration and the film, "It was beautiful." He says more than he'll ever know.

As multiple fashion luminaries comment throughout the film, the end of Valentino is the end of couture. (Lagerfeld and Armani seem to be out of competition, and aren't couturiers per se.) The current economic turmoil and the underlying social upheaval it implies have sealed present-day couture's fate for good. Conspicious consumption and the chicanery that funds it is done for a generation or more. Italy's crown jewel industry is in tatters, waiting for government handouts; multiple fashion houses are ruined. Permira's wager on raping the name that Valentino and Giammetti built over 50 years has been called in at the sum of hundreds of millions of Euros when it recently wrote down much of the value of Valentino Fashion Group. We'll go back -- hopefully -- to a time when fashion becomes a meritocracy again and conglomerate oligarchs have no place in whatever remains of haute couture. Valentino and Giammetti have left the party with one final, masterful flourish; Tyrnauer begins a new career having been there to capture its glory. It was beautiful.

"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.

The fly-on-the-wall documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor was just released in Canada yesterday and it was mesmerizing! The film can induce laughter and tears but its insider expose of the fashion business is pure privilege for the viewer.

Valentino Garavani and his longtime companion and business partner Giancarlo Giammetti are products of La Dolce Vita - the early 60s in Italy when all things Italian, from Vespas and Pucci to Sophia Loren and Fellini, were the definition of chic. At the height of this second Italian Renaissance Valentino emerged as a couturier, becoming internationally known when he made Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress for her marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968. For the next thirty years the company grew, expanding into ready to wear, accessories, and licensing, until 1998 when the company was sold for 300 million. Four years later, the company was resold, bringing Matteo Marzotto, a handsome, shrewd businessman into the picture, who at times is an antagonist to Valentino and Giancarlo.

This film captures 2006/07, before Valentino, age 75, decided to retire after celebrating his 45th year in fashion. The film also captures the death of couture, as it was defined in the 1950s by couturiers who had been trained by masters of dressmaking from the 1920s; Lagerfeld quietly whispers into Valentino's ear, thinking the microphone can not capture his words, 'You and I are the last two… everyone else makes rags.' This may sound egotistical, but its not far from the truth. Couturiers are a dying breed - in their place are designers, who make their living by branding accessories and scents while creating unwearable over-the-top creations intended as marketing opportunities for the fashion media.

This film also wryly captures the absurdity of fashion; a Fellini soundtrack plays while a string of fashion caricatures arrive at the finale dinner, from Donatella Versace and her perma-tanned skin and white-blonde hair to Karl Lagerfeld in his signature three inch tall collar and leather pants, to fan fluttering three hundred and fifty pound Andre Leon Talley. Valentino's fashion world is full of extraordinary characters; aging European princesses with bosoms bulging over their couture necklines ride on the back of Vespas like its still 1962, while cut throat businessmen make deals behind the guise of flirting smiles for the camera. Valentino tries to appear calm and in control but easily succumbs to childish temper tantrums, befitting his artistic temperament, while Giancarlo, who yields more authority over Valentino than anyone knows, tries to keep everything on an even keel.

This film is worth seeing more than once and the DVD will definitely be making a permanent home in our library!

I love when people are really, deeply passionate about something. While I'm not a big fan of sports, I love to listen to my friends give the details of their latest game or match; even though the actual event isn't particularly interesting to me, the fact that it means so much to someone (especially someone close to me) makes it far more interesting. Valentino: The Last Emperor shows a man who is passionate about fashion; he never thought of being a firefighter or anything else. Even in the midst of financial shuffling and lavish celebrations, Valentino never loses sight of why he does what he does: he wants to make beautiful clothes for beautiful women.

And his passion is contagious. After a show, he is greeted by fans who are in tears at the sheer genius of what they see on the runway. It's impossible not to be as impressed as they are; while the fashion, in this film, takes a backseat to the man himself, it is still breath- taking. Just as Ratatouille allows you to brush with what it means to love food on a deeper lover, so this film allows a glimpse into what it means to really love fashion.

Of course, fashion isn't the only thing on display here; Valentino himself is a fascinating subject for a documentary. On one hand, he's a genius. On the other, he's a diva (though it really isn't that surprising that those two go hand-in-hand). The little moments this film shows--the glimpses of Valentino's everyday life--provide a sense of a life that seems like it's from another planet. A model getting her hair done reads about Einstein. Five pugs line up on the seats of a private jet. Valentino tells his partner and lover Giancarlo Giametti that the design for a stage isn't right, mere hours before the show must go on.

Yet, even with the tantrums and mood swings (at times, Valentino yells at the cameraman, providing a strange sense of reality TV), you get the sense that Valentino really hasn't been affected by the power and money he's accumulated over the years. He simply wants to make sure that his work is presented in the best way possible. And what work it is. At the celebration of Valentino's 45 year career, his dresses line the walls, sit atop columns, and rest within glass cubes. Each piece represents a time so perfectly, because no designer is as important or relevant as Valentino.

As much as the film celebrates his past, Valentino's future is also discussed to a great degree. The question is asked: who can follow in Valentino's footsteps, when he inevitably retires? The answer is obvious: nobody can. There's only one Valentino, the Last Emperor of fashion.

A leisurely style and a clear view of glorious gorgeous clothes and the true Dolce Vita lifestyle are well on show here is this definite and definitive documentary about legendary haute couturier Valentino. In an era of documentaries about anyone, the subject matter here is a standout because of the luxury fashion topic, the Italian man his Mediterranean life and lifestyle and of course incredible clothes. However, again, my serious complaint is about the terrible hand held photography... sloppy camera handling and out of focus moments. A cameraman who behaves like a deranged one legged stalker hopping about, behind shoulders, photographing blank backs and lurching around in order to capture a group working on a model as she dresses basically gets in the way of his own film. GET A TRIPOD! Apart from the wobble stalker cam, we are treated to sensational fashion show runs in awesome settings with breathtaking clothes and settings that add to the emotion. Valentino's relationship with partner Ginacarlo is lovingly but slightly shown, and has special poignancy in scrapbook photos and TV edits. Overall it is a gorgeous film, better than The September Issue and even has some of the same fringe dwellers. The realization that now in the new century his designs and life is just another corporate transfer for heartless profit is a well exposed moment. Beautiful is a word used a lot, and so suits this film. Bummer about the lousy camera-work.

I really had a great time during the screening. More than a view of the back shop of Valentino's Haute Couture company, the film gives a very unique and interesting point of view of the relation between Valentino and his friend Giancarlo. This let us understand how the complex mix of their talent has let them build their empire. At the same time, the film is not just a panegyric portrait of Valentino, its tracking him even in his tantrums and incoherences. This leads to many humorous moments during which you can't know if Valentino is aware or not of the image he gives of himself. Finally the last aspect I have really liked is that with the retirement of Valentino a very specific way of comprehending "haute couture" is fading away. The film witnesses the interference of finance in fashion companies which is particularly interesting in the case of the Valentino Group.

Valentino: The Last Emperor

The best way to design a dress for a woman is to never ask her want she wants.

In fact, the only person that the dressmaker in this documentary listens to is his business partner.

Filmed over the final years of his career in the fashion industry, enigmatic designer Valentino Garavani reluctantly opens up the doors of his illustrious fashion house to the public for the first time as he preps to hang up his shears for good.

Archival footage documenting his early beginnings in Italy to his rise in popularity amongst Hollywood starlets, like Elizabeth Taylor, is interwoven with scenes of his last show in 2008, as well as in-depth interviews with some of those aforementioned celebrities, fellow designers, critics and Valentino's longtime business partner Giancarlo Giammetti to construct one compelling biography.

Moreover, Valentino is proof that a man can design a dress for a woman that isn't see-through. Green Light

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This portrait of Valentino shows a vain aging giant and his devoted business partner, who provides the center of the film, as Valentino does not seem to be very interested in participating in this feature-length glamour-shot. The clothes are lovely--Valentino is an extremely talented designer, wedded to a solid, if traditional, notion of female glamour.

The main problem with this film is I didn't learn anything from it--the portrait of Valentino in the New Yorker a couple of years back was far more revealing and informative. While this film has its entertaining moments, anyone who has seen documentaries about, or witnessed first-hand the fashion world has seen it all before. The film should have gone into more detail about Valentino the man, rather than just giving us a superficial portrait. Assolutamente not essential viewing.

A wonderful portrait, displays several sides of Valentino from Emperor to flawed human like the rest of us. The artist, the opulent lifestyle, the dedicated partnership with his lover, the changing of the fashion business and its ramifications on this aging lion and the reality he created.

Music for the movie was perfectly selected, very well executed, edited and beautiful cinematography. This film was inspiring, funny, and touching. If your lucky enough to have Valentino in your city, hurry to the theater as it is a must see. What comes after Valentino? As he says, "The flood".

The main film was a fascinating glimpse into the world of the ultra rich Europeans, who live in a manner that the rest of us cannot even imagine. Valentino is the last of the Haute Couture designers and he was determined to go out with a bang, even if his world had been taken over by the acquisition and merger corporations and hedge funds.

Although I could never afford a Valentino dress, nor do I think I would ever want to spend that kind of money, but to have them there at all is the stuff dreams are made of. Dainty pleated bias cut and filmy swirls of color, hand sewn by expert seamstresses, which say to the rest of us that the wearer doesn't have to ask the price. As we learn, there is little money in the high fashion collections, they are to advertise the name. The suits want to market the small more affordable stuff, perfume, belts, scarves, purses, which carry the company name, which is what they have paid for. As we see, they will sell the company off within days or weeks if they can turn a profit - forget about promises made, they don't go along with the sale. The expensive exquisitely hand sewn Italian and French craftsmanship will be replaced by mass production, probably in China. They have the name, that is all that matters. Someone notes that when Valentino and the last great couturiers began in the 50's and 60's, they were were taught by the designers of the 20s, and that cannot happen today.

The best part of the DVD for me was the special features, one of which showed Valentino's spectacular farewell party and his last collection. A party held within view of the Coliseum illuminated with Valentino red lighting, and a fireworks display over Rome! Throughout Valentino walked imperiously, left hand in his pocket, lips pursed ready for the cheek bumping mwah, mwah, greeting for both men and women and his palm downward wave. At one of his farewell parties, the entire workforce was invited and were given gifts. We never got to see what the gifts consisted of.

Another special feature, which for me could have been the main film, was a view of the army of staff who maintain Valentino's residences, a French Château where the mile long(?) brick drive runs between dead straight rows of identical trees and brown patches of grass are sprayed green, a ski chalet in Gstadt, apartments in New York and Milan, all overseen by an Irish major domo, Michael Kelly, who seems to do everything from covering the furniture with dust cloths, cleaning the

pugs' teeth, walking the pugs, winding the clocks, setting tables, supervising the kitchen, meeting the celebrity guests with umbrellas in a rainstorm and acting as a walking Rolodex and desk calendar for Valentino. As the guest arrive at the gate, the staff inform Mr. Kelly on the walkie talkie, so that Mr. V. can greet them at the door by name, in case he has forgotten a Duchess or confused Elton John with Joan Collins. The clockwork precision and organization which goes into maintaining these homes reminded me of the films about the Royal Family. We learned that they have identical table settings in each home, the maid preparing Mr. Valentino's room in Gstadt gets a birthday present and a cheek bump from Mr. V., Had he been prompted by Mr. Kelly and who had really chosen the white blouse she received?

Mr. Kelly goes along on the luxurious private jet, with a chef and the perfectly matched pugs, who get their own seats. We see him shopping in New York for food and flowers, polishing spots from mirrors while giving a last minute inspection in the Château, and dealing with a flooded carpet in the tented outdoor dining room as the rain teemed down on the day of the party - all the time fluently switching from English to French. How does one get a job like that? Where did he get his start? If only the special feature had been as long as the main feature. I enjoyed seeing how the other fraction of one percent lived.

A fascinating look behind the scenes at the man who always dreamed of beautiful things.

The peek into the emotions and thoughts of Valentino was a rare treasure. Usually we just see the finished product, not the process.

One thing that is clear in the process is the driven nature of Valentino. He is always dressed and acts as if he is on display. He cannot relax for a moment. He once comments he worked 40 hours straight. As someone who worked 23 hours straight once, I applaud that. But one has to think that a multimillionaire can relax sometime. Not Valentino.

He may not have been happy giving permission to enter his world, but we are richer for it.

You certainly don't have to be gay to work in this industry, but it sure helps as you stare at breasts all day.

You already know you ought to watch out when a documentary's subtitle borders on pretentious, as in the case of Valentino: The Last Emperor, which shamelessly rips off Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-winning epic. Sure, it might have been an attempt on the director's part to give the film extra glamor, but it also makes the huge disappointment much harder to swallow: this film gets its wrong so badly it even makes Oliver Stone's flawed Alexander biopic look like Lawrence of Arabia in comparison.

But maybe that's a little harsh. Maybe the hyperbolic title is justified, since the movie's subject matter, Italian designer Valentino Garavani (know only as Valentino to the entire world), is considered the single most important person in the fashion industry of the 20th century. The film aims to show the last days of his "empire" and the party he organized for his retirement, an event which was attended by nearly all the celebrities (mostly film stars) he has dressed over the years. We also get to see glimpses of his personal life, thanks to recollections of how he got started, images of him playing with his dogs and interviews with people such as his business (and life) partner Giancarlo Giammetti. All of this is meant to come together in a vast, respectful portrait of a living legend of sorts.

Why doesn't this happen, then? Well, primarily because the documentary doesn't have a real ark. Aside from when it focuses on the party and its aftermath, the movie consists of a series of clips or interviews which have no coherent link between them. Perhaps this is deliberate, given some scenes try to capture Valentino's famous mood swings, but the depiction that emerges is as lifeless as the fashion king's face (the latter is due to excessive surgery). Throughout the film he speaks Italian, English and French, but fails to convey any real emotions in either language.

In the end, though, the man himself isn't to blame. The problem lies with the director, Matt Tyrnauer, whose biggest defect is the fact that he isn't a filmmaker, but a Vanity Fair journalist. Because of this background, the film isn't as much a tribute as it is a clumsy attempt at sucking-up, which results in the sorry mess Tyrnauer tried to pass off as a proper documentary (how it managed to be selected at the Venice Film Festival, we'll probably never know). Not counting the stylish opening credits, there's absolutely nothing worth seeing here.

4,5/10

I agree, I saw the movie at Hamptons Film Fest and everybody was astonish in many ways. Such a great designer doing such a movie. The director is not working at all and the editing is really bad and the cinematography is really bad too. The music is grotesque and does not help the situation at all. I did not understand the reason to do a movie like this. It seems it' s been made to destroy his myth. I really hoped the director was more inspired by Valentino. And the title...please...it' s really embarrassing in 2008. More than pretentious. We prefer to remember Valentino for his dresses or red dresses, more than remember Valentino as a grotesque actor.

The film is not so good, I 've to say. It' s a documentary but not really a well done documentary, considering the good one made for Armani by Scorzese or by Lagarfield for Chanel...or Sophia Coppola for Dolce e Gabbana....It's 'bad done' I would say. The title is MORE than PRETENTIOUS. Poor Bertolucci...Bad thing people who does not know humility... The director, Matt Tyrnauer, is not a director and you can well see it. But it seems he has not ideas as well. It' s a mess of situations with non sense. The plot, if we could call it in this way, is the persona of Valentino and his partner Giameto in private life, but it seems they are not spontaneous, that they want to appear in front of the camera not for their beautiful work but just to appear in front of the camera. It' s a little bit embarrassing to see a designer acting in this way instead of going on with his job. It seems he can' t live without being a celebrity even if his reality movie could make him looking a little bit ridiculous. To me awful movie.