Lagerfeld Confidential

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I can safely say that I never once in my life thought that I wanted to be Karl Lagerfeld. I have honestly never given him a second thought, much as I never given a thought to the fashion world, seeing as my annual clothing budget probably doesn´t break the $200 mark. But after watching "Lagerfeld Confidential," I will say this: I want a giant bucket of rings just like Karl Lagerfeld.

Karl simply grabs a fat fistful of rings out of this huge bowl each day and wears several on each figure. They resemble heavy duty steel washers, and give Karl the appearance of walking around with two pairs of brass knuckles. He´s kind of like Mr. T… but different.

Lagerfeld was born in Germany in 1933 and rose quickly to prominence in the fashion world, first as a free-lancer and, more famously, as the designer for Chanel for the past few decades. Director Rodolphe Marconi followed the fashion icon on his world-wide travels for three years in the process of making this documentary.

The documentary´s strength is its most obvious one: Karl Lagerfeld is a fascinating figure to watch on camera. With his snow white hair, perma-sunglasses and crisply tailored dark suits, he is quite striking, invariably the center of attention in any room he enters even when said room contains numerous beautiful young models.

And Karl Lagerfeld enters a lot of rooms in this movie. Sometimes it seems that´s all he does. With his stiff, deliberate walk, Lagerfeld moves robot-like through the back stage of a fashion show or through a back room filled with clothing racks, coolly surveying a world he always holds at least one degree of separation away from himself.

The documentary´s weakness is, unfortunately, a rather substantial one. Marconi is one of the most inept on-screen questioners I have ever seen in a documentary. It´s hard to tell if he´s in awe of Lagerfeld or simply awkward, but he asks simple questions in such an elliptical manner that even his subject frequently loses patience with him. In one of the strangest interviews in the family, Marconi actually seems nervous about asking Lagerfeld about his, um, you know, "certain sexual orientation." Is there a single viewer who is shocked to learn that Karl Lagerfeld is gay?

Fortunately, Lagerfeld is a confident story-teller and can sometimes squeeze lemonade out of Marconi´s lemons. He´s at his most interesting when discussing his childhood. His libertine mother set a free-wheeling example, and her refusal to allow her son think of his homosexuality as anything other than natural probably shaped his life as much as anything else his family could have done.

Lagerfeld always plays it cool, to the point where he sometimes comes off as a poseur. His pragmatic view of both friendships and love is sometimes downright chilling, and it´s hard not to wonder if those omnipresent sunglasses are a protective device. OK, he does take the glasses off at his work desk. He also comes across as a hard worker who approached design more as a craft than as art. He´s fastidious but keeps a messy office because he says a tidy one would drive him mad. He´s also a gifted photographer and more of the film´s time is devoted to this aspect of his work than his actual designs.

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