This is an entertaining spoof built around a Paris fashion week, and was actually filmed during that event. It's a typical Robert Altman film, with multiple story lines, fast cutting from one setup to another, and overlapping soundtracks, which all make it hard to follow at the cinema, and very suitable for rental so it can be replayed. It would take too long even to begin to summarise the subplots and characters, but in addition to a galactically stellar cast; there's a host of guest celebrities, including lots of couturiers; and of course dozens of models on and off the catwalk, in and out of designer clothes, and in the climactic scene without clothes at all.
It is always healthy - both for laughers and laughees - to laugh at powerful people who take themselves too seriously; and by poking fun at the fashion industry and its surrounding media circus, Altman is performing a social service, as well as being a true artist. But I don't find his satire as cruelly biting as some people do. He treats some characters sympathetically or neutrally - eg the designer played by Anouk Aimée and Marcello Mastroianni's mystery figure. And even the extreme characters - eg Richard E Grant's screamingly gay designer or Kim Basinger's gushing TV reporter - are only a little more exaggerated than some real-life equivalents.
The final nude catwalk parade is not only a visually delightful and neat solution to the problem of a designer having lost her collection; but is also a postmodern take on the fairytale of the emperor's new clothes - nowadays, the crooks wouldn't have to pretend they were making clothes for the vain emperor, but would be able to sell him nudity, so long as it had a trendy designer label!
It is always healthy - both for laughers and laughees - to laugh at powerful people who take themselves too seriously; and by poking fun at the fashion industry and its surrounding media circus, Altman is performing a social service, as well as being a true artist. But I don't find his satire as cruelly biting as some people do. He treats some characters sympathetically or neutrally - eg the designer played by Anouk Aimée and Marcello Mastroianni's mystery figure. And even the extreme characters - eg Richard E Grant's screamingly gay designer or Kim Basinger's gushing TV reporter - are only a little more exaggerated than some real-life equivalents.
The final nude catwalk parade is not only a visually delightful and neat solution to the problem of a designer having lost her collection; but is also a postmodern take on the fairytale of the emperor's new clothes - nowadays, the crooks wouldn't have to pretend they were making clothes for the vain emperor, but would be able to sell him nudity, so long as it had a trendy designer label!