There have been quite a few films revolving about the world of fashion in the last few years.
The Devil Wears Prada is probably the most famous one, but, if you’re looking for something less mainstream, try Andrei Konchalovsky’s Glyanets (Gloss, 2007).
The film – screening tonight at London’s Barbican as part of the Konchalovsky’s Directorspective (8.45 pm) that features work the director chose especially for this event – follows the vicissitudes of a naïve young girl, factory worker Galya (Yuliya Vysotskaya), who moves from a small village near the Black Sea to Moscow dreaming of becoming a high fashion model.
Galya – who has an obsession with fashion magazines that the director shows by intertwining the story with shots of glossy pages portraying models and advertising beauty products – first tries getting a job at fashion magazine Beauty where she ends up being laughed at by the editor-in-chief since she lacks the beauty and style needed.
She eventually finds a job as a seamstress for a designer who looks like (a fatter version of) Karl Lagerfeld (and who is surrounded by more shady characters, among them a guy in a kilt and bleached hair à la Gaultier).
After accidentally managing to model for the designer during a disastrously kitsch catwalk show, Galya graduates to another job, ending up working for a matchmaking agency specialised in organising marriages between models and rich men.
Though the movie reminds me of Antonio Pietrangeli’s Io la conoscevo bene (I Knew Her Well, 1965), especially for its main character naively dreaming of becoming famous but ending up trapped in a fake world made of illusions (though in Pietrangeli’s film the young protagonist wanted to become an actress rather than a fashion model), Konchalovsky gave his story a stronger satirical dark edge, populating his film with designers who look and behave like neurotic tacky gagsters.
The film tries to make a social critique of the vapid and superficially glamorous world of fashion, but also looks at the bitter reality of the "elite brides" in Russia through the main character's transformation from Galya into a doomed Grace Kelly/Catherine Deneuve look-alike.
The screen captures I did from a copy of the film my brother got me a while back may not make it justice, but may give you an idea about what to expect.
Tonight’s screening will be introduced by Konchalovsky himself who will hopefully tell the audience more about the inspirations that led him to this film and maybe reveal if he ever got sued by Lagerfeld for satirising him in this film.
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