Prêt-à-Porter

I missed Ready to Wear when it was released in 1994, and finally rented the film. I had great anticipation. The fashion industry was the next to squirm under Mr. Altman's cinematic scalpel. Altman assembled a large, talented ensemble cast as usual. The locale is the annual prêt-à-porter fashion show in Paris, as a multitude of characters descend on hotels, fashion houses, restaurants, and runways; their stories intertwining and crisscrossing across a pastiche of interlocking plotlines. It'll be just like Nashville, in other words, another Altman tour de force.

Oddly and sadly, it's nothing of the sort. Ready to Wear loses its way early, and drifts aimlessly along for its lengthy 133 minute runtime. The characters lack the depth of his other films; they're poorly defined and you never really feel you get to know them. The dialogue is shallow and lacks bite. Even the little things tend to annoy; why use sidewalk dog poop as a unifying symbol? What's the point to that?

All in all I found Ready to Wear disappointing and probably my least favorite of Altman's films.

There's one thing in this film that I love in a very film nerdish sort of way and that is Danny Aiello's character, which is, in a strange way, a homage to an earlier character in Altman's California Split (a film well worth revisiting). And while some of the characters may seem over the top, my own experience in the fashion world would attest to them being pretty realistic. While it feels as fragmented as any Altman, there is a story here, and it's a pretty subtle one, but perfectly satisfactory in my opinion. I think the film, overall, is woefully under-rated. I feel like everyone got caught up in the idea of "ALTMAN" and then got confused by "THE STARS" and then didn't really bother to look at the movie, which has some lovely grace and is well worth the time. Then again, why listen to me, I liked Ishtar.

Robert Altman's death three days ago brings to mind not only his movies, but his unique style: letting people develop the characters themselves, and overlapping dialogue. In that sense, "Pret-a-Porter/Ready to Wear" is possibly the best example of his movies. One really gets the feeling that they just filmed whatever happened here. This story of a murder in the midst of a Paris fashion show pretty much does whatever it wants, and does a worthwhile job with it. Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, and a too-long-to-name list of other people.

So, in conclusion: thanks for everything, Mr. Altman! You were one of the greatest directors of all time!

And that's not saying that it's great either. It is not. But it's tremendously low imdb rating makes me wonder who the heck is voting here. Pret-a-Porter is a pretty good Robert Altman film that is no better or worse than Short Cuts, which, while I feel it is a good film, I also think it is overrated. This one is, however, heavily underrated, and they both got the same imdb score from me: 7/10 = 3/4 stars.

This is another attempt to make another Nashville. There's a humongous ensemble cast of actors, some of the best on the planet, a couple of the best who ever lived. The screenwriter doesn't connect it all very well, and lots of the characters seem superfluous or underdeveloped, unlike in Nashville where even the characters who are only in a couple of scenes are as familiar to the viewer as a close friend. I would particularly have liked the Danny Aiello/Teri Garr section to have been removed. It falls pretty flat. The Sophia Loren/Marcello Mastrioanni section, the section that most film buffs are going to be excited for, also plops by its end. And Kim Basinger, a good actress, truly deserving her L.A. Confidential Oscar, is not very good as the Southern U.S. reporter: her accent is difficult to get around, and her character is often annoying, too. Sometimes, though, her pieces succeed.

Many other of the vignettes succeed quite well, although there are never any fireworks about to shoot off. The Tim Robbins/Julia Roberts plot is very funny. The three publishers, Sally Kellerman, Tracy Ullman, and Linda Hunt's attempts to sign photographer Milo (Stephen Rea) to their magazine are all very humorous. The love quadrangle between the two designers, Forest Whitaker and Richard E. Grant, and their lovers is very good, also. Anouk Aimee's section is also great, maybe the best part (Rupet Everett is good, also). I loved her so much in La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2. I was aching for her and Marcello Mastrioanni to interact.

The ending is truly fantastic. It is very well directed and filmed. It's a good film.

Although some Altman films are more tightly focused on a unifying narrative thread, for instance Gosford Park or Cookie's Fortune, Pret-a-porter employs the over-lapping ensemble format perhaps best exemplified in Nashville and, to some extent, MASH. I wonder, however, whether some reviewers have not missed the point of this film. Although there is not linear narrative line, the film is unified by a theme -- that of betrayal. Everyone appears to be betraying someone else in this film, whether a spouse, partner, or close relation, and ultimately wrapped in the naked fashion parade -- the industry betraying its consumers. There are weak aspects of the "plot" to be sure, but also some great performances -- Richard E Grant stands out as a camp classic, while Rupert Everett convincingly plays straight. And how Sophia Loren manages to maintain poise, look stunning, and put in a good comedic performance while wearing hugely over-sized hats is beyond me.