Review: The man behind those coveted ‘Manolos’
Manolo Blahnik. The shoe designer’s name signifies fanciful, frivolous footwear, gloriously whimsical shoes immortalized by Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City” and coveted as a cult item. In the new documentary “Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes For Lizards,” director Michael Roberts turns the spotlight onto the man behind the shoes, a quirky individual who still brims with the creative enthusiasm of the boy from the Canary Islands who molded foil into slippers for reptiles.
Though the fashion superstars (Anna Wintour, Andre Leon Talley, Isaac Mizrahi, Iman) who appear throughout the documentary refer to Blahnik as a “poet in couture,” “a myth,” who creates “the happiest feet in the world,” we come to understand the artist as an individual. He’s a dreamer, a loner, an empath, whose name has become larger than life, one of the biggest Spanish celebrities, and a fashion icon whose career has spanned London in the 1960s to New York in the 1980s to global domination in the 2000s and beyond.
Roberts’ film seeks to illustrate Blahnik as a person — his personality and relationships, the things that inspire and delight him (nature, flowers, Goya, free-spirited women), and it does just that. At times it is a bit unfocused, following a loosely chronological but otherwise haphazard structure. Yet it’s still a treat to spend time in the company of a true artist, never before illuminated with such clarity.
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‘Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards’
No rating
Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes
Playing: Landmark Nuart Theatre, West L.A.
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