Beautiful finale lifts Forbidden
Yellow is Forbidden (E, 97mins) Directed by Pietra Brettkelly Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
Guo Pei’s life is punctuated by one moment of global hyper-celeb madness. That was when popstar Rihanna appeared on the steps of the 2015 New York Met Gala draped in a ferociously yellow fur-trimmed cape. It was a red-carpet coup that stunned even the Met crowd.
The designer of that cape was Guo Pei. Before Rihanna, Guo was well known in her native China for dressing the very wealthiest women, but in the west, she was mostly unknown.
New Zealand film-maker Pietra Brettkelly read up on Guo Pei’s story and somehow secured permission to make a documentary, Yellow is Forbidden, on the designer’s life and work.
Guo trades in opulence. Her designs are extraordinary, perfectly impractical, and shriek ‘‘disposable wealth’’.
I truly found a lot of the work here ridiculous in a way I never have watching any other designer docos over the past few years. While McQueen, Westwood, Valentino and Dior and I featured design even a sloven like me could appreciate, Yellow is Forbidden mostly left me cold.
Guo also seems to have had indulgent investors behind her from the beginning. There is none of the rags-to-rag-trade narrative that films of this genre almost always have at their spine.
Coupled with what looks like an obnoxious view of her own staff, and I found myself swinging from disinterested to flat-out irritated as it entered its second-hour. And then something odd happened. The film’s finale is a front-row seat at Guo’s Spring 2017 collection.
What comes down the runway is beyond spectacular. Dress after dress of ludicrous artifice, but spectacular beauty.
Finally, I felt like I got the point. Guo’s show also featured the lastever walk by legendary model Carmen Dell’Orefice, then 85 years old and 70 years after her first Vogue cover. Someone make a film, please?
Guo trades in opulence. Her designs are extraordinary and perfectly impractical.