The Gospel According to André
Directed by: Kate Novack
Documentary - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 May 2018
Documentary - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 May 2018
The recent fashion documentary carousel is starting to circle back around to its first slide. Both The September Issue and The First Monday in May chronicled Vogue the magazine, its annual celebratory extravaganza, and its current editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour. Interviewed in both those films was André Leon Talley, a Vogue editor-at-large for most of the time during the endless round-robin fashion docs. Various other fashion institutions must be seething with jealousy now that the Vogue kingdom has four docs under their belt if you include Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel. Dior has one, Yves St. Laurent and Chanel received the historical fiction treatment, and Karl Lagerfeld and Manolo Blahnik round out the also-rans.
I only know Talley from the first two Vogue docs and am surprised a filmmaker out there thought there was enough here for a deep dive. Talley sports a far more intriguing history than Wintour, Blahnik, and Iris Apfel, which is where director Kate Novack’s film is strongest, chronicling André’s upbringing in segregated North Carolina, his time at Brown, and his ascendence in Paris. However, if it were not for The September Issue and The First Monday in May, I would still have no idea what Talley did at Vogue; Novack skips over it. Perhaps knowing other films already showed audiences Talley’s role at the magazine and any possible audience for The Gospel According to André has already seen those films is why Novack chose to look backwards at the expense of today.
I only know Talley from the first two Vogue docs and am surprised a filmmaker out there thought there was enough here for a deep dive. Talley sports a far more intriguing history than Wintour, Blahnik, and Iris Apfel, which is where director Kate Novack’s film is strongest, chronicling André’s upbringing in segregated North Carolina, his time at Brown, and his ascendence in Paris. However, if it were not for The September Issue and The First Monday in May, I would still have no idea what Talley did at Vogue; Novack skips over it. Perhaps knowing other films already showed audiences Talley’s role at the magazine and any possible audience for The Gospel According to André has already seen those films is why Novack chose to look backwards at the expense of today.
Cherish the juxtaposition though. In one moment, André describes how his salt of the Earth grandmother washed linens at an all-male dormitory during the Jim Crow era. In the very next sequence, André repeatedly yells at an all-white landscaping crew cutting down a tree in his yard to “not hurt the shrub!” André’s unlikely northern exodus away from segregation into the embrace of Brown University, the Parisian elite, Warhol’s Factory, and Studio 54 sounds like the plot of a wistful ’70’s film if Novack didn’t provide so much photographic and video evidence of the journey. André’s ascendence to the pinnacle of chic really is the stuff dreams are made of.
If this were a documentary about Marc Jacobs or Tom Ford, who both appear in the film, nobody would bat an eye about their trip to the top. But neither Jacobs nor Ford look like André Leon Talley. André inevitably confronts the racial topic and how he pointedly ignores it and lets his work define who he is, but he’s stiff arming it. André tears up at one point thinking about past injustices, but there is never a full acknowledgement of the most obvious theme in the room; he sticks out. André carried himself as no different than any other Brown grad student, other than the cape and fedora of course.
But oh fuck, The Gospel According to André has a 2016 election arc. There are the inevitable scenes where everyone knows Hillary will win so just stop worrying about Election Day and sweating it out in front of cable news. André adores the Obamas, influenced how Michelle Obama dressed, and was shattered to see it all torn apart by the orange one and his cronies. However, André being André, he still admired and gushed over Melania’s attire on Inauguration Day.
I hope you walk into The Gospel According to André knowing who he is, but honestly, I cannot imagine anyone entering this not knowing of the man. It’s not because he’s overly famous; he isn’t. But his appeal is limited to fashion; it does not cross genres. The conversations regarding André’s sexuality remind me of yet another fashion doc, Bill Cunningham New York. André is gay, but there is no room for love, there is only the obsession. Obsessives make interesting documentary choices; however, why they are required to be attached to the world of fashion in today’s market eludes me.
I hope you walk into The Gospel According to André knowing who he is, but honestly, I cannot imagine anyone entering this not knowing of the man. It’s not because he’s overly famous; he isn’t. But his appeal is limited to fashion; it does not cross genres. The conversations regarding André’s sexuality remind me of yet another fashion doc, Bill Cunningham New York. André is gay, but there is no room for love, there is only the obsession. Obsessives make interesting documentary choices; however, why they are required to be attached to the world of fashion in today’s market eludes me.
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