We'll Take Manhattan

Terribly childish script, superficial with very one dimensional characterisations; makes the acting look very hammy. Such a shame - they had all that style and locations to play with - such a waste.

Lordy, what can one say that is positive about this farcical retro-homage to the rise of the 60's first supermodel Jean Shrimpton and bad boy photographer, David Bailey. Swinging 60s London was yet to happen when the stuffy, privileged world of British Vogue was invaded by the street-wise Bailey whose black and white grainy high contrast fashion sense was yet the norm. Shrimpton as depicted by Doctor Who's Karen Gillian is a moon-face, country virgin who falls for the brash photog and is promptly toss to the curb by her screaming, conservative middle class father who sees his daughter as a fallen woman. It was after all the era of the new pill and good girls were still pure until marriage!! Given the assignment to photograph a new spread for Vogue in New York City, Bailey and Shrimp head out with the uptight, Lady Clare Rendlesham (Helen McCrory) to recreate the tired, status quo look which British Vogue had presented since WWII. With lots of head butting between Bailey and Rendlesham over tasteful lady-like poses, camera focal range, and the NYC skyline, Shrimpton sees her budding career going down in flames. Slightly idiotic dialogue is meant to convey the class differences between the blue collar Bailey and Shrimpton and Rendlesham, the "posh" women he finds unwilling to give him the opportunity as the innovative artist with the camera. But the work speaks for itself as contact sheets arrive in London and the situation comes to a head with the expected happy ending. Bailey forever alters British Vogue, Jean becomes the exquisite iconic face of the 60s, and London swings despite the conservative government.

Barnard as confrontational Bailey is heavy fisted but charming, and the venerable Helen McCrory as the staid Lady Tasteful Clare Rendlesham offers a strident performance that is almost laughable. However, it is the woeful Ms. Gillian as The Shrimp who makes the production painful to view. Jean Shrimpton had not evolved into the staggering beauty in the New York photographs that Bailey took of her, but in Ms. Gillian is absent the kind of potential Shrimpton already possessed as a leggy young model. The teased bouffant hair, pudgy eyes, and the askew legs did characterize the early Jean, but Gillian misses on every point thanks to woeful styling. To observe Karen Gillian is to see the Dr. Who companion in 60s "clobber" and the wrong eye shadow applications -- sadly, even the teddy bear photographed better. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the show is they used David Bailey's actual photographs from the New York shoot of Jean Shrimpton in the closing credits. That was worth sitting though the program.

Look, on the positive side, Karen Gillan looks every bit as lovely as you'd expect in every shot. But that's not enough to sustain a movie as light as this!

The basic problem is we all know the story -- young turks storm in, tell those fuddy duddy oldies there's a new sheriff in town, fuddy duddy oldies get their come-uppance as they learn how fantasic the youngsters are at their chosen art. It's Mary Sue fan fiction on the big screen.

And the story doesn't become more interesting by claiming it (more or less...) represents some events that really happened fifty years ago.

A much more interesting story, for example, would have been one focussing on Lady Clare and the top editors at Vogue, with Bailey and Shrimpton as bit characters. Presumably they had been doing things a certain way throughout the late 40s and the fifties; presumably they had reason to believe things were changing in the world of fashion; but what were the conversations around this? A mercenary acceptance that a tidal wave of young money might as well be milked? An understanding that fashion runs in cycles, and the cycle of the next twenty years was going to be rebel without a clue? Terror that they'd never understood what they were doing, but they seemed to have a feel for what people wanted -- except now they no longer had that feel?

A film of a bunch of people sitting around a table, done well, can be riveting -- cf Conspiracy. A movie like that, with the head staff of British Vogue in 1961 puzzling out the situation in which they found themselves, and asking where the world was headed, and why it had changed, from the vantage of fashion -- now that's a movie that has serious potential for being compelling and original!

It was the early 1960s and British fashion photography was somewhat stuck in a rut. Models all did a version of the same poses and photographers used medium format, i.e. 2 1/4" square, cameras. Then along came the new kid with a vastly different style and a Pentax 35mm camera.

Along with him came a very young girl from an agrarian family, pretty and tall but with no experience. Her name is Jean Shrimpton and she is played here by Karen Gillan. While Gillan doesn't that much look like a young Shrimpton she is lovely in her own right and a fine actress.

There is an assignment to be shot in Manhattan. The young photographer is brash and difficult but has a vision he won't abandon even with the prospect of being fired. His vision works and changes the fashion approach thereafter. Shrimpto became a supermodel.

I really enjoyed this, I will watch it again. I was already a big Karen Gillan fan, she can play almost anything. On Amazon Sreaming movies.

I love photography, and whilst I knew I wasn't going to be watching a masterpiece, I did hope for something at least interesting and re waking about the legend and his muse. Instead I was offered what I assume we're anecdotes from Bailey's memoir that barely get fleshed out and then moved on to the next obvious bit of storytelling. The acting was pretty average and overall I felt somewhat cheated. Bailey being one of the best fashion photographers in British history, I had hoped for a deeper look at this man. Instead I watched the end credits and wondered if the swinging 60's was actually all hype.