Valentino: The Last Emperor; directed by Matt Tyrnauer, 2008
This is basically a movie about all the crazy shit you can do with your dogs if you're rich.
OK, so it's a movie about fashion, and if you love fashion you've already seen it or know that you want to.
But if you're not a fashion person, there's still a lot going on here for you to enjoy. It's a movie about a way of life and an art form that few still practice and is rapidly disappearing. It's about old world practices and modern business.
It's also a movie about love, about giving yourself over to someone else's vision as a sustained act of love over decades and decades. We never really discover what motivation Valentino's long time companion Giancarlo Giammetti has for working for this man, but we believe him when he says that he's happy. And the two of them engage in some truly grade-A entertaining bickering.
Tyrnauer worked as a reporter for Vanity Fair, and the movie has a Vanity Fair feel to it: glossy and glamorous, with lots of witty details and asides.
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