High & Low – John Galliano

CinemaSerfDec 2023

3.5

I think Kevin Macdonald has tread a fine line quite carefully here as he uses a candid interview with John Galliano as the bedrock for a retrospective on the career of this enigmatic and undoubtedly flawed individual. From his graduation from St. Martin's College in London through to his ill-fated custodianship of Haute Couture at Dior, we follow this man on a warts and all documentary that is substantially supported by some seriously good archive research and some equally frank contributions from friends and foes alike. As someone put it in the narrative, some of his fashions did beg the questions "who for?" and "where?" and that is part of what makes this interesting. The association behind the more obscure of his high end fashion (especially his Egyptian-inspired designs that even Elizabeth Taylor might struggle with) through to the more scantily clad and ambiguous creations with that worn by the ordinary person shopping on the high street is always a curiously, obliquely, tangential one! The film tells us about the man, certainly, but also about the vagaries of an industry that pushes, drives, rewards and punishes in equal measure. What is clear from early on here is that Galliano became addicted to almost everything - from the varied contents of a bottle, or to a pencil and a pair of scissors, or just to the lucrative adulation that created a "Hyde" at times from his original "Jekyll". The fact that he clearly has little actual memory of the incident in the Café de la Perle that brought about his downfall is testament to his complete lack of self awareness and control by this point in his career. Burning the candle at both ends and in the middle would, I suspect, turn most of us into mush. Macdonald doesn't attempt to coax us in any given direction regarding our reaction to this incident, and to the fall out. Galliano has his opponents and his proponents. We are presented with as much fact as there is, plenty of prognostication - and left to conclude just how evil (or not) he is/was/may still be. It also gives us a chance to look in the mirror and ask ourselves where forgiveness may lie... It's entertaining at times, and the pictorial documentation of his career and that of many of his contemporaries is a must watch for anyone interested in the development of, and fascination in, this industry.