MOVIE REVIEW : Wenders’ ‘Clothes’ Is Scanty Stuff

Wim Wenders’ last dramatic feature, “Until the End of the World,” lasted more than three hours and felt interminable. Watching it was like waiting out the end of the world. His documentary “Notebook on Cities and Clothes” (Nuart) is considerably shorter, but it’s still a long haul in pursuit of nothing in particular.

Wenders’ metaphysics have never been his strong point; he’s as wowed by deep-think banalities as any slumming philosophy grad student. But his extraordinary gift for imagery has occasionally overridden, even justified, his highfalutin impulses. Wenders’ career demonstrates how terrible a filmmaker can sometimes be if he dares to be great.

There’s little that’s great and much that’s terrible in “Notebook,” Wenders’ quasi-journalistic meditation on Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. Wenders starts out by explaining his reasons for making the movie. He tells us that he knows nothing about fashion. “I’m interested in the world, not in fashion,” he harrumphs, but then decides “fashion and cinema” have something in common. On a roll, he further declares that “identity is out of fashion.”

Wenders’ musings are supposed to have a quirky resonance but they don’t, really--they’d fit right in with the patter on a Calvin Klein Obsession commercial. Wenders also brings out Yamamoto’s deep-think, which doesn’t exactly add a lot to the party.

What we don’t see enough of is Yamamoto’s fashions--presumably the reason we’re watching a movie about him in the first place. Wenders shoots a Paris fashion show in such a perversely unrevealing manner that the effect is almost abstract. Despite Wenders’ vaunted free-spiritedness, there’s something puritanical about his approach; he denies us the pleasure of Yamamoto’s art and gives us his ramblings instead. And since Yamamoto is a rather dour fellow, this makes for a protracted downer of a movie.

Wenders still strikes the occasional beautiful image; a few stray shots of Paris and Tokyo have his trademark forlorn ghostliness. But “Notebook” (Times-rated Family) isn’t much more than an extended doodle.

The press kit handed out to critics includes several pages of addresses for stores and boutiques carrying Yamamoto’s clothing line but it’s doubtful anyone will walk out of this film in a mood to shop.

‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’

A Road Movies Filmproduktion GMBH production. A Milestone release from the Connoisseur Collection. Director Wim Wenders. Executive producer Ulrich Felsberg. Screenplay by Wim Wenders based on a proposal by Francois Burkhardt. Cinematographers Robbie Muller, Muriel Edelstein, Uli Kudicke, Wim Wenders, Masatoshi Nakajima, Masahi Chikamori. Editor Dominique Auvray, Lenie Savietto and Anne Schnee. Music Laurent Petitgand. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Unrated.