McQueen: Film Review

McQueen: Film Review

Director: Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui

Fashion films get a thrilling makeover with McQueen, detailing the rise and inevitable fall of Lee Alexander McQueen, the British designer who set the world alight and then burnt too brightly.

Using access to those close to McQueen, and eschewing the usual talking heads, Bonhote and Ettedgui open up the world of fashion to those who are usually turned off by such matters, and do more than enough to satiate those who adore the genre.

Utilising footage from McQueen's early thrilling shows, cataloguing the chaos caused by the catwalk's upturning and reinvention, the biopic builds an intriguing look at what sent such ripples through the world. But it's also smart enough to spend a bit of time building up to this, using home video footage of McQueen's childhood days as well.

It helps that Bonhote and Ettedgui give the film a pace that's compelling, but never too breathless that it strangles the flow of what's unfolding. It also benefits greatly from access that pieces together an intimate portrait of an artist, what fuels them and how that fuel is manifested in their own work.

Admittedly, there are the usual hyperbolic bon mots such as "You can't teach talent", but in among the usual trappings of a character destined for tragedy, there's also a lot to enjoy in McQueen, principally the catwalk shows, given new credence and insight by McQueen's reasoning for them - and from those who worked on them.

But the directors know just talking about fashion is akin to cinematically showing paint dry, so lavish McQueen with electrifying catwalk performances. Interestingly, the film, much like McQueen reaches a nadir and descent after he's taken in by the major fashion houses and in the final 40 minutes, the doco takes a turn to more dirge-like tendencies as the drugs and depression sets in and it builds toward the final act of tragedy.

It may be a little overlong towards the end, and the sense of melancholy a little stifling in among the eulogising for the tortured tragic talent, but McQueen is, for the large part, a soaring film that makes its subject and subject matter accessible to all, imbuing any who watch it with great insights into the hero of yob couture as much as it plays into the psyche of the talent.