‘Lagerfeld Confidential’: Not so confidential

In Lagerfeld Confidential, director Rodolphe Marconi takes us on a private tour through Karl Lagerfeld’s daily life but does little more than film his subject as if he were a distant lion on the horizon, scared to make a peep. When Marconi is given a chance to probe or dispel a well-known rumor he stumbles like a star-struck adolescent—on the question of Lagerfeld’s sexual orientation, Lagerfeld, annoyed, barks back “Spit it out!” Out of the 200 hours of footage Marconi filmed, what we’re given doesn’t bring us any closer to knowing the true Lagerfeld—if there is one. But film from Lagerfeld’s youth (lovely grainy images of him playing on the beach), shots inside his studio surrounded by his sharply dressed kiss-ass acolytes and serious time devoted to the story of the baby pillow he cannot leave home without provide enough visual and literary interest to keep your eyes on the screen.

Lagerfeld Confidential is a documentary made not only for fashionphiles but also, in the spirit of documentary filmmaking, for the reality television voyeur in all of us. Statistically speaking, there are few people in this world so intriguing and unique as to warrant a two-hour coattail party but Lagerfeld is deserving of just that. His ambivalence and carefully crafted disinterest in the world that he completely fabricated (after taking on the empire begun by glamour legend Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel) makes every contradiction, every witty platitude, seem like something out of an existential novel—if Camus had rubbed elbows with the drunk blasé ex-pat writers of the ’40s. But where the curiosity towards reality stars usually dies with each uttered sentence, Lagerfeld’s commentary and insights are delivered and packaged like perfect desserts resting in Parisian street windows. Regarding his lack of close relationships (or ability to abandon a friendship at the drop of the hat whether it spanned a decade or a day) he quips, “I don’t want to be a reality in people’s lives, I want to be an apparition.” Unfortunately for us, in this documentary he remains just that.

LAGERFELD CONFIDENTIAL DIR. RODOLPHE MARCONI | NOT RATED | OPENS FRI AT LAEMMLE’S GRANDE 4-PLEX, LOS ANGELES

Tags: documentary, Film, karl lagerfeld