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LAGERFELD CONFIDENTIAL
Written, Photographed & Directed by Rodolphe Marconi.
Produced by Gregory Bernard.
Edited by Laure Mercier.
Released by Koch Lorber Films.
Language: French with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: France. 89 min. Not Rated.
With Karl Lagerfeld, Nicole Kidman, Anna Wintour & Baz Luhrmann.

Designer Karl Lagerfeld wants to be an illusive icon instead of just a flesh-and-blood man, or so he says. He prefers to have other people stay unreal to him, too. Lagerfeld is indeed an iconic character. Since he took over the House of Chanel in 1983, he has become one of the most powerful arbiters of taste and style in the world.

Rodolphe Marconi’s stimulating documentary gets so personal that it’s almost shot from Lagerfeld’s point of view. We’re so close up that we feel his physical presence intensely. We see the strange fetishism in his dress – he has vast piles of rings and puts two or three on each finger, and wears fingerless gloves, flamboyant boots, with his trademark white ponytail.

Shameless and matter of fact, Lagerfeld reveals his intimate views on fashion, pedophilia, prostitution, and on the meaning of life. If you want a socially conscious career, he believes, you can be a civil servant working behind a desk. At times, Lagerfeld comes across as loveable, sympathetic, and even wise. At other times, he seems creepy, like Michael Jackson, yet he is someone who thinks deeply about his strange, high-profile life.

As a documentary, Lagerfeld Confidential is juicy and satisfying. For those hungry to get inside the fashion world, it will scratch every itch. It’s a grittier, edgier, and more thought-provoking film than Douglas Keeve’s entertaining 1995 portrait of Isaac Mizrahi, Unzipped. Marconi shows the ways that Lagerfeld is an intensely private person, yet he gets “behind the sunglasses” without violating that privacy. There’s a wary, teasing rapport between the filmmaker and his subject, and Marconi isn’t afraid to nudge and push, to reveal some of Lagerfeld’s secrets.

Obsessive and extreme, Lagerfeld lives for fashion, photography, and books. He loathes the attachment to objects, though he has an extensive library and endless rooms of unworn suits, and gets nauseous if he sleeps without a tattered "belly pillow" against his stomach. He pooh-poohs clichés about loneliness, but we see him having a silent dinner, looking at nothing, and the distance between him and the Adonis he photographs lounging in his spacious home.

Karl Lagerfeld believes that everyone has the right life, the life that fits them. Lagerfeld Confidential displays the shrewd manner in which he has designed his world, moment by moment. The viewer gets to walk a mile in his thousand-dollar boots, and though it might be a cliché, yes, there’s something lonely about it. Elizabeth Bachner
October 24, 2007