Valentino: The Last Emperor

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.