FILM
Still on Stage at 90 Albert Maysles documentary captures Iris Apfel’s independence in a fashion world demanding performance BY STEVE ERICKSON
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Iris is the exact opposite of a vacant, anorexic supermodel. While she’s reliant on designers for her source material, she combines their clothes and accessories in a way that reflects her own creativity, rather than simply copying their dictates. Her sense of style has proven popular enough to get her museum shows, department store windows, and even a teaching position. “Iris” follows its subject around New York and Palm Bach as she shops and sorts through her collection. Maysles appears on camera a few times — he managed to complete another film, “In Transit,” before passing away in March — but a woman, who’s never identified, conducts most of the interviews with Iris. This isn’t the kind of documentary that introduces fictional elements or self-consciously breaks the fourth wall. The camera tends to efface its presence — no doubt, plenty of work went into creating that illusion — but one gets the sense that Iris, like many Maysles protagonists, is performing for it. She doesn’t seem to leave the house without a spiked necklace and African bracelets. “Iris” doesn’t dodge the question of the old age’s aches and pains or the inevitability of death, but it’s clear that Iris would rather go shopping in Harlem than think about her dwindling energy level. In some
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omen in the public eye face tremendous pressure to look beautiful and sexy. You’d think that by the time they reach their 80s, this demand would relent, but I just read a newspaper article critiquing 89-year-old Angela Lansbury’s appearance. If actresses turn to plastic surgery to look eternally youthful, they run the risk of having it backfire and being ridiculed. Iris Apfel, the subject of the late Albert Maysles’ documentary “Iris,” doesn’t play the beauty game at all. In fact, she frankly says, “I don’t like pretty.” The 90-year -old, who’s had a long career as an interior decorator and now exists as a freelance “rare bird of fashion,” may not be conventionally beautiful, but she has a remarkable sense of style. Iris and her husband Carl, whose 100th birthday is celebrated during the film, founded a company called Old World Weavers, which reproduced fabrics and designs from the 1600s through the 1800s. Although the company was successful, Iris didn’t become a minor celebrity until a 2005 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition launched by curator Harold Koda. Afterwards, she became an “octogenarian starlet,”
as she puts it. Maysles is best known for three documentary features: “Salesman,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “Grey Gardens.” That last, from 1975, recently revived by Film Forum and probably bound for a Criterion DVD and Blu-Ray, pioneered the “non-fiction melodrama.” Although its influence wouldn’t be felt immediately, it can be seen in recent films like Robert Greene’s “Actress.” “Iris” departs from Maysles’ classic trio in a number of ways — for one, it was directed by him alone, while his earlier films were collaborative productions. The result is a thoughtful character study. In her own way, Iris is just as enthralling a person to watch as Big Edie and Little Edie of “Grey Gardens,” and she’s much more self-aware and in control of her own persona. No one is likely to accuse this film of being a freak show. “Feminist” is not a word ever used in “Iris.” Apfel talks about her curiosity regarding politics and history and how these forces manifest themselves in a humble dress, but she doesn’t discuss her own political views. Nevertheless, “Iris” locates an unconventional woman following her own stylistic guidelines on the margins of the fashion industry, a field that many have written off as hopelessly exploitative and sexist.
Iris Apfel in Albert Maysles’ documentary “Iris.”
IRIS Directed by Albert Maysles Magnolia Pictures Opens Apr. 29 Film Forum 209 W. Houston St. filmforum.org Lincoln Plaza Cinema 1886 Broadway at 63rd St. lincolnplazacinema.com
respects, “Iris” seems remarkably modern for the work of an 88-yearold filmmaker. It finds common ground with “Actress” in suggesting that we — especially the 51 percent of us who happen to be female — are constantly performing.
A Buddhist Pedestrian in Paris Tsai Ming-liang expands on his “Walker” shorts with “Journey to the West” BY STEVE ERICKSON
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ut gay Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang has never had much American commercial success. Yet the critical kudos he’s received seem to be building momentum for his work. His film “Stray Dogs” was one of the most acclaimed Asian movies released in the US last year. Just last month, his 1992 debut “Rebels of the Neon God” got its first American release and the Museum of the Moving Image mounted a
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comprehensive Tsai retrospective. At the same time, his filmmaking is growing increasingly formalist, even “difficult.” His latest, “Jour ney to the West,” leaves behind the socioeconomic concerns of “Stray Dogs” for a spiritual contemplativeness. It stars Tsai’s partner and constant star Lee Kang-sheng as a red-robed monk walking very slowly through Marseille. Tsai has made a series of six “Walker” shorts revolving around this character, based on seventh-century Buddhist monk Xuanzang (who
spent 17 years walking through Asia), but “Journey to the West” is his most ambitious treatment of the Walker yet. Tsai’s previous depictions of urban life have largely focused on its alienating and neurosis-inducing qualities. Even if a film like “The Hole,” inspired by fears of a Y2K apocalypse, ends on a hopeful note, that optimism is a brief note in a symphony of fear and anxiety. “Journey to the West” calls for patience, but it’s optimis-
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JOURNEY TO THE WEST Directed by Tsai Ming-liang Cinema Guild No dialogue May 5-7 only Anthology Film Archives 32 Second Ave. at Second St. anthologyfilmarchives.org
JOURNEY, continued on p.40
April 30 - May 13, 2015 | GayCityNews.nyc