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"Back numbers of Sham," as Nabokov's ode has it. Zoli Management Inc. at the crisscross of designers, advertisers and commercial artisans, female and male models are measured and weighed, the nerve center of the new meat market. Hopefuls zip in and out with portfolios, slogans and brands are sprinkled about ("the Chanel use," "the Avon look"). The lighting of cheekbones and the application of mascara in close-up are the main events, photo sessions are extended Svengali-Trilby tangos. "That's it... Tighten up a bit now... Bitchier now... A little more innocent, a little more sexual.") Frederick Wiseman and the performers behind the veil, Ballet, La Danse, Crazy Horse... The manufacturing and packaging of idealized images for consumption (and deception) is exemplified as "Mister Middle America" is created in a photographer's Manhattan loft in between chatter of Japanese food and leftist classmates, a Warholian joke. (The great ghoul himself turns up later to assess the magic: "It's, uh, a lot of work, yeah.") The central sequence has a Von Sternberg wannabe demanding take after take of a woman taking four steps on the sidewalk—the contrast is not just between the fashion plate in the spotlight and the weathered New York faces on the edges of the shoot, but also between the choreographer's obsessive capturing of the pose and the camera's saturnine recording of the process. The sculpting of live mannequins is its own art form, Wiseman closes on the catwalk where the models are unveiled not like the French Cancan dancers but the mechanical Marias from Metropolis. Altman in Prêt-à-Porter pays tribute, but who remembers Crichton's Looker? In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |