Notebook on Cities & Clothes (1989)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Directed by Wim Wenders
Starring Wim Wenders and Yohji Yamamoto

Features:

• Running audio commentary with director Wenders
  
• Deleted scenes with commentary
  
• "Twelve Years Later" short
  

Released by: Anchor Bay
Region: 1
Rating: NR, suitable for most audiences
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Rent it if you're a fan of Wenders or the fashion world.

Yohji Yamamoto is easily one of Japan's most well-known fashion designers. Either loved or reviled by the fashion press (and who isn't?), his designs are dark, minimal, and geometric. Fond of elegant simplicity and clean lines, he has drawn flak from the traditional fashionistas of Europe for avoiding the high drama of prevailing design modes in favor of this approach. One of his inspirations, according to the man himself, is the look and feel of partiucular cities. Two of the most common sources of this urban inspiration for Yamamoto are Paris and Tokyo.

Wim Wenders is a renowned filmmaker with a similar penchant for cities, and his stark landscapes and cityscapes in many of his films have been noted as powerful "films of the desiring gaze" towards the urban shape against a horizon. It seems only natural then that these two urbanophiles would get along famously. The result of their collaboration is this film, a documentary about Yamamoto, ostensibly, though the film says as much about Wenders as it does the Japanese fashion designer.

The documentary form lets Wenders play unashamedly with the pure visual aspect of the film, and revel in the interest and chaos of the urban environment without any pretense of story. Yamamoto is often shown inset into such a shot via a small portable video viewer, meaning that even the film's subject takes a visual backseat to the cities themselves. This is not the case during the few fashion shows that are depicted within. Once the actual fashion starts, everything is immediate, with none of Wenders' distancing mechanisms. As soon as the shows end, though, it's right back to cityscapes and video screens for the subjects, with few exceptions. The effect is unusual and a little jarring.

The film manages to convey a pretty frank look into the creative mind of a fashion designer--something that's difficult to imagine with all the posturing and drama obligatory to the European and American fashion world. It also conveys quite a bit about what Wenders and Yamamoto both find so fascinating about the cityscape, and why it figures so prominently in both their creative endeavors. For those interested in artistic process of any kind, this makes for an interesting viewing.

The DVD provides a few cut scenes, lots of excellent Wenders commentary, and a sort of "reunion" featurette revolving around the two principals of the movie. The video is excellent, though the limitations of video technology circa 1989 are really shown in glaring fashion in a few of the devices Wenders uses in the movie to distance Yamamoto from his cityscapes (poor refresh rates on the video monitors make the inset image look really wonky in a few scenes).

All in all, this is a solid pick for fans of Wenders or high fashion, but of really limited interest to most anyone else. I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Wenders for the uninitiated, either, as it really requires some broader understanding of his body of work to appreciate some of the motifs that run so strongly through this one.