Ready to Wear (1994)

i must have seen a different film!!

How sad is this?

Crappy film

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

In the tradition of Nashville and Short Cuts comes another interweaving mix of odd tales set during a Parisian fashion show with an all star cast.Robert Altman is a true pro and one of American cinema's greats. Here, his slick directing, coupled with a snazzy and peppy soundtrack, and a veritable cornucopia of top actors keep things moving along well enough in his 1994 fashion satire to avoid boredom. But, unlike his other multi-strand tales like 'Nashville' and 'Short Cuts', the various stories never feel as satisfying or well connected.In fact, several are almost perfunctory and have absolutely nothing to do with the fashion trade (especially the Robbins-Roberts & Everett threads, neither of which feel important and lack full resolution). And alas, even then, the ones that do offer nothing biting, insightful or new to say about this sometimes crazy and backhanded business except the same tired 'natural is more beautiful' spiel. It's a shame too as the film is never out and out boring, but it just makes me wish for more. It had everything needed for a great film, and it ended up being just an okay one.Why, oh why, Bob?

I'll give this one two points because, some parts of it are really visually interesting (as one would certainly expect in a film about fashion). Altman, whose work I've always mistrusted, shows his true colors here. His take on the superficiality of the fashion world is as superficial as fashion itself! I guess our auteur thinks shots of feet stepping in poo will subtly express a righteous disdain for the fashion world. Mr.Altman, taking cheap shots at obvious (and incredibly easy) targets is not clever. Your lack of subtlety (and understanding) of your subject amazes. Your trademark intertwining of several plot lines does not work here. Know this--its a simple topic, really, and deserves a simple approach. Even your self righteous disgust at the superficiality of the fashion world is misplaced. This marks you as an intellectual snob (I just always knew your were).Fashion is silly, but it's also fun, and it's more important to us than we care to admit. You show no empathy for any of your many characters,you just set them up like bowling pins and proceed to knock them down as noisily and messily as possible. Some of your most unpleasant traits persist here--this is clearly a director's statement, your gig, and the actors, famous as they are, are just chess pieces to be moved about according to whim--is this sort of power amusing to you? The story line is so poorly thought out, that it just doesn't exist. You are clearly annoyed with the idea of celebrity, but guess what--you're one too--don't we get any fun out of status--are we that proud? Why the hostility towards fashion people? I suppose they're not thinking the sorts of important thoughts that you deem necessary to justify one's existence.This is a great masturbatory mess of a movie, a so called social critique/fantasy that tells us nothing and goes nowhere. Even the last scene, the now-infamous nude modeling romp, doesn't cut the boredom or blot out the odious stench of pretension. I'm with the English--subtlety is the key to effective humor, including satire (I assume this piece was intended be a satire--of something!)

There's one thing in this film that I love in a very film nerdish sort of way and that is Danny Aiello's character, which is, in a strange way, a homage to an earlier character in Altman's California Split (a film well worth revisiting). And while some of the characters may seem over the top, my own experience in the fashion world would attest to them being pretty realistic. While it feels as fragmented as any Altman, there is a story here, and it's a pretty subtle one, but perfectly satisfactory in my opinion. I think the film, overall, is woefully under-rated. I feel like everyone got caught up in the idea of "ALTMAN" and then got confused by "THE STARS" and then didn't really bother to look at the movie, which has some lovely grace and is well worth the time. Then again, why listen to me, I liked Ishtar.

Back in 1994, when Robert Altman made "Prêt-à-porter", he was 70 years old. He was one of the few important auteurs of a profession celebrating its first centennial. Again, the wise filmmaker's satirical approach (directed on this opportunity to the fashion world) was misunderstood. This time, the maestro pointed his finger to consumerism on a global scale, by covering a convention of the haute couture circle, in which fashion was the vehicle to expose the dehumanised materialism of contemporary world.Starting with a prologue at Dior's in Moscow (which could be Rome or Paris), Altman described a multinational microcosm defined by its unrestrained marketing of material goods. Altman did not underestimate fashion as a key element in our lives: as a matter of fact, he used fashion as the clue to gain access to the film. As expected, "Prêt-à-porter" was not a paean to designers, models, photographers or fashion magazine editors. After the convention's creator unexpectedly dies, Altman and co-writer Barbara Shulgasser aimed at the surface of the fashion world, searching for its essence, for a trace of humanity, and led us to an unexpected ending, which is a sort of purification, a baring of the bodies and souls. Altman, at 70, knew very well that mankind's main alternative was (and is) the transparent ethics that radiates from pure spirits committed to preserve life on this planet, beyond fabrics and fashions.To tell the story of this garment catharsis, Altman used as his stylistic technique the superficiality that permeates the milieu he's describing (one I know after working in a couple of such events in my youth.) Everything is bright and beautiful, but somehow it seems as if "nothing is happening." The audience is denied all the myths that have led many designers and models to haughtiness, so their attitudes become more vacuous, and their incentive to rapacious consumerism is more obvious. Being unable to speak of art or the "fashion essence" in a contemporary setting where commerce rules, Altman used a fragmented narrative, with overlapped dialogues –often improvised- as in his other reflections on the crisis of communication, a central theme in "Nashville." Altman is one of the few filmmakers who is able to reunite large casts and create characters of high sociological value (mainly in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller", "Nashville", "A Wedding", "Short Cuts" and "Gosford Park", and to a lesser degree in "HealtH" and "The Player"), but he is also averse to psychological realism, that old strategy inherited from the 19th century novel, and that some people still ask for in our post-post-modern world...In this film, Altman relied on famous faces to construct a game of facades with few strokes, choosing among the best of them: those who are able to create a believable character with a few significant details, those who can go from the subtle –as the wine spot on a reporter's sweater- to the pompous, as the dark glasses of the Irish photographer or Sophia Loren's hats. On the other hand, he relied on the audiences' own information, making them interact with the film, adding data or making associations. For example, only those who have seen Vittorio de Sica's "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and "Sunflower," can enjoy to the full the cinematic homage to Sophia and Marcello Mastroianni. Their story echoes "Sunflower", while there is a reprise of Sophia's strip-tease in "Yesterday…" with a different (and sad) effect on Marcello; or if you have been in an event like the one in the film, you may remember people as the characters played by Tim Robbins and Julia Roberts, two reporters who spend the whole event making love in their hotel rooms."Prêt-à-porter" is a good film, which contains some of the typical Altmanian digressions that some do not enjoy. But, as Andrei Tarkovsky once said: "When you are in front of a really major figure, you have to accept him with all his weaknesses, which become distinctive qualities of his aesthetics."