GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

1

/ DECEMBER 23, 1994

Evenings Out

The emperor's new clothes

Robert Altman's Bronx cheer to the fashion industry

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Ready to Wear

directed by Robert Altman

Reviewed by Doreen Cudnik

Every year in Paris, the top designers and models stage the world's hottest fashion show. It's called Prêt-à-Porter, which means ready to wear. Against the backdrop of fashion's most glamorous event, Robert Altman's Ready to Wear is a lively sendup of the fashion world, complete with sex, greed and murder-some things that never go out of style.

Writer-director Altman says the idea to make the film came ten years ago, when he visited France with his wife Kathryn. She told him she would like to see a fashion show, as they had never been to one. It just happened that they were there during the week of Prêt-à-Porter. Altman recalls, "The minute that show started, the music hit and I thought, 'Wow! This is the circus! This is great! I've got to make a film about this."" As he engaged in extensive research-even moving to Paris to work on the film-Altman developed an acute understanding of the fashion industry and its distinct group of players. According to Altman, the industry is a fascinating mix of real artists and pure hype artists. With Ready to Wear, as with his earlier The Player, Altman's focus is on the hype artist-the magazine editors, buyers, photographers, and so on.

TV reporter Kitty Potter interviews egotistical fashion photographer Milo O' Brannigan in the Paris airport.

In this film, Altman assembles a cast of characters that is as loaded with celebrities as a televised Hollywood AIDS benefit. In all, Altman invited some 38 stars to the party, including a plethora of his usual suspects: Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Richard E. Grant, Lyle Lovett, Sally Kellerman, Lili Taylor, Linda Hunt, Lauren Bacall, and Kim Basinger. The cast also includes Altman newcomers Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Teri Garr, Stephen Rea, and Tracey Ullman, and of course, the real-life stars of the fashion industry, well over 75 designers and models. The action begins as Paris is abuzz with anticipation for the start of the world's greatest fashion show. Amid the chaos, the widely-disliked head of the fashion council, Olivier de la Fontaine, is suddenly found dead in his limousine. The police presume that he was murdered, so everyone involved in the Paris fashion world becomes a suspect, including his wife, Isabella (Sophia Loren) and his fashion-designer lover Simone Lowenthal (Anouk Aimee).

As the news of his death travels with lightning speed through the fashion community, two American reporters, Joe Flynn and Anne Eisenhower (Tim Robbins and Julia Roberts) are among those thrown into the case. Flynn, a sportswriter with the Washington Post, is about to check out of the hotel when he gets a call from his editor instructing him to stay in Paris and cover the de la Fontaine murder. "I'm a sports reporter. I don't know dick about fashion," he tells his editor, but to no avail.

At the same time, Anne Eisenhower of the Houston Chronicle is checking into the room Flynn was in the process of checking out of. Confusion ensues when they are forced to temporarily share a room until the hotel works out a compromise. In the meantime, Flynn's luggage gets pilfered from the hotel lobby by a mysterious murder suspect (Marcello Mastroianni). Eisenhower is also luggage-less, having lost it in the bedlam that is the Paris airport. Sans clothes, the two embark on a wildly wonderful affair, eating room service food and wearing nothing but hotel-issue white terrycloth robes as they phone in reports based on TV news coverage.

Mastroianni's character, Sergei, looking every bit the Russian spy, finds himself in a bit of trouble when he flees the limousine that the head of the Fashion Council has just been "murdered" in. He pilfers other people's closets and suitcases in an effort to blend in with the Paris fashion crowd. His real mission is to get close enough to speak with his former child bride, Isabella, now de la Fontaine's widow. Isabella faints when the two lovers are reunited after a forty-year separation.

The re-teaming of Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni was a stroke of casting genius. These two legends of the Italian cinema have made over a dozen films together, including the 1964 comedy Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. In Prêt-à-Porter (the film's original title), they recreate a bit of history from the 1964 film when Loren does a seductive strip tease looking like a goddess dominatrix while Mastroianni howls joyfully on the bed. Altman said, "If you don't know anything about Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, this scene is still going to be funny. But if you know or even subliminally remember, it just gives you so much more. It's like a tapestry-it gives you more depth, so what you're seeing is history."

In his first Altman film, Irish actor Stephen Rea was thrilled to work with the famed director. The two met in New York and became friends. When Altman suggested that Rea play a major role in Ready to Wear, the actor obliged without hesitation.

Rea portrays Milo O'Brannagan, an egocentric superstar photographer sought after by three persistent fashion editors (Sally Kellerman, Linda Hunt and Tracey Ullman) who will do anything to make him sign an exclusive contract with their magazines. Having that kind of power is just too enticing for O'Brannagan, who suckers all three women into doing "anything," then quickly photographs them. British Vogue editor Ullman is priceless when, after having her photo snapped by the Irish O'Brannagan, she screams at him, "And if we gave you back your bloody country you wouldn't know what to fucking do with it anyway!" Besides having some of the funniest lines, Ullman gets to wear some fierce hats in this film. Divas take notice.

Beyond the unspoken gay and lesbian influence on the fashion industry, one of the subplots involves an affair between two male designers, Cy Bianco (Forest Whitaker) and Cort Romney (Richard E. Grant). Romney, in full makeup and a Henry V shaved haircut, is an unlikely candidate to be the lover of the hip, tie-dyed Bianco. On his last words to Whitaker before filming their onscreen rendezvouz, Grant says, "I told him, 'Can we agree not to have any tongues on this? Call me old fashioned'."

Accompanying the film is a fresh soundtrack with some of pop's reigning superstars lending their talents. Scenes from the movie appear in the video for "Here Comes The Hostepper," the hit by Jamaican dance hall artist Ini Kamoze, and rap divas Salt-N-Pepa wrote the song "Here We Come" especially for the Cy Bianco fashion show segment in the film. Also present on the soundtrack are songs from Janet Jackson, U2, Cece Peniston, and the Rolling Stones, making the CD worth having even if you miss the movie.

The highlight of the film comes when Lowenthal, stripped of power when her son sells her design house to a wealthy Texas bootmaker, makes the ultimate fashion commentary, creating the most revolutionary "new look" ever seen.

For this scene, Altman wanted to capture the audience's bare reactions. Most of the Paris fashion types attending the show didn't know what they were going to see when they sat down; neither did the cast. Dazzling onlookers with the shock of the "new" is the mission of every fashion show, but this one proved more shocking than ever. "React the way you want to react," Altman told everyone before the cameras rolled.

As the Cranberries' haunting song "Pretty" soars through the stone space, the models float onto the runway one by one, completely nude, with heads held high. Linda Hunt's mouth drops open; Sally Kellerman and Tracey Ullman stand to applaud. Altman's camera follows the models as if they were dressed, in a simple, beautiful display of the 'full frontal nudity' that Hollywood usually can't handle. After the show ends and the models disappear, everyone stands, stomps their feet and applauds.

Altman's admiration for the models who pulled it off is unwavering. "Remember these are girls who are not porno stars, and don't go out and walk around naked in public. They're honest-to-god runway models," he said.

After that scene, Fad-TV reporter Kitty Potter (Kim Basinger) gives a speech that sums up the whole film. "Is that supposed to be some kind of statement or something? What is this bullshit?" she asks as she hands her microphone to her assistant and walks out.

Altman said he considered the nude scene and Kitty's speech at the end of it to be the most important scene in the film. "If that scene wasn't there, the film would be nothing," Altman said. "Kitty says it all. The show went on, the money was spent, the audience was there, music played, and there were no clothes.".

On the fashion world's impending reaction to his latest film, Altman says it's not about what the fashion world is going to make of it. The country-music world hated Nashville. So just as the film death of fashion council head Olivier de la Fontaine turns out to be not so mysterious, what Altman is saying with this film is that when you take away all the glamour, glitter and intrigue of the fashion world, perhaps, like the fairy tale of the emperor's new clothes, there isn't anything real to look at after all. But it's still a fun romp.

Ready to Wear is playing at the Drexel Grandview in Columbus, and the Cedar-Lee in Cleveland.