Rhapsodies

For this week I decided to look into films about the cutthroat industry of fashion.

The first on my list, The Devil Wears Prada tells a predictable fable about sacrificing everything that matters to you for the sake of a career. Anne Hathaway plays Andy, our token innocent. Who scores what everyone says is a dream job working for the the great and ruthless editor of world famous fashion magazine, that she has never heard of, Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep. Andy see’s this as a stepping stone for a career in journalism and all she has to do is stay on for a year. Easy, right?

I don’t think I was really the target audience for this because I was never really got into it. But the visuals are interesting, especially the recurring montage sequences that I think do a better job commenting on the scenario than the actual story.

Also Meryl Sreep is great as Miranda who is simultaneously brilliant at her job and the eratic boss from hell.

The next on my list is the musical Funny Face starring Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson (of Eloise fame). It’s essentially a Cinderella story about a bookstore clerk with a “funny face”, played by Hepburn, who’s discovered (nearly shanghaied) by a fashion photographer, played by Astaire. This leads to a trip to Paris, beautiful clothes courtesy of Edith Head, song and dance, and beatniks.

This film is an adorable example of form over substance, the design and look of it is gorgeous with a very theatrical quality to it. Kay Thompson steals the show as the editor of the fashion magazine, ironically coming off as a more comical version of Streep’s character (though Thompson did it first.) As for the rest of the rest of the film… meh.

Sure Fred Astaire is up to form, and Audrey Hepburn is adorable, most of the film and the plot seem to only be there to hold the musical numbers together, and even though Astaire’s choreography is fantastic the actual music is only average, (though that might just be me having ridiculously high standards knowing it’s a sample of George Gershwin’s tragically short Hollywood career)