Matt Tyrnauer's Valentino: The Last Emperor may not have received quite as much attention as last year's other high-profile fashion documentary, R.J. Cutler's The September Issue, but it nonetheless leaves that film for dead. Not only is designer Valentino Garavani a more interesting subject than Vogue editor Anna Wintour—to be fair, Valentino gave Tyrnauer's crew much greater access to himself and his circle than Wintour gave Cutler's to herself, and it shows—but the film is also funnier, more dramatic and, in the end, more moving. It helps that Tyrnauer covered Valentino at a pivotal time in the designer's life, following him for a year between the release of the 2006 spring-summer collection and the July 2007 retrospective of his forty-five-year career that would prove to be his final show. Valentino is an eccentric, passionate and occasionally irascible lead and there are some very funny exchanges between him and his partner Giancarlo Giammetti ("You look a little bit too tan." "Tan? No." "A little less wouldn't hurt."), as well as some very touching ones. And the film's climax at the retrospective—a sequence that uses Nino Rota's music from Fellini's 8 ½ to draw some very clever parallels—is outstanding.

The Australian, 6 January 2010