McQueen *** (2018, Alexander McQueen) – Movie Review

Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s documentary about the life of designer Alexander McQueen is exhaustive and exhausting. It is fascinating and commendable, but a bit of a hard-going long haul in the cinema at 111 minutes, when an hour TV doc would suffice for most folks. But fashion buffs will feel differently, no doubt.

Certainly Bonhôte and Ettedgui turn in a very efficient, well-crafted film, and writer Peter Ettedgui does a good job of pulling together the available material and interviews with surviving friends, lovers and relatives, or at least the ones willing to talk.

McQueen’s life proves a hugely frustrating and depressing saga, as he goes from rags to riches to melt down and early death, with a mixture of bravado, brio and bullying. He emerges as a majorly talented and ultra-ambitious, but unappealing and unattractive figure in this warts and all documentary.

He was the great opportunist. Being one frock short of a show, he just dresses up one of his models in the available clingfilm. That’s brio! He was the great showman. The footage of his shows is spectacular. His life comes over much more as a horror story than the advertised fairy tale. Certainly he does not come over as a very good gay role model. On the plus side, McQueen was openly gay: ‘I was sure of myself and my sexuality and I’ve got nothing to hide. I went straight from my mother’s womb onto the gay parade.’ He told his family when he was 18 and they eventually accepted it.

There is a strong impression that McQueen’s progress through life was one long, none-too-happy struggle, and that he was punching above his weight, and that eventually had risen too high, and was just waiting for the fall. That is interesting but it really isn’t much fun as an evening out.

However, the many clips of his legendary catwalk shows are stunning, showing his place as an artist who happened to work in fashion. That is his best memorial.

There is strong language and nudity.

Lee Alexander McQueen (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010).

[Spoiler alert] Lee Alexander McQueen CBE (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) died by suicide in 2010, only 40, at his home in Mayfair, London. He founded his own UK Alexander McQueen label and from 1996 to 2001 worked simultaneously as chief designer at Givenchy in Paris.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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