High & Low - John Galliano Movie Review: A fascinating study of a fashion designer's fall from grace

The premise of Kevin Macdonald’s High & Low - John Galliano lends itself well to the documentary format, given that it charts the zenith and nadir of the career of a famous fashion designer. The highs are insane, and the lows plummet to profound depths. The first half of the film captures John Galliano’s rise from the boutiques of London to the haute couture scene in France. Two-three passages in the first half stand out, thanks to the nuggets of information Kevin presents. One is about how Galliano was inspired by Abel Gance’s silent film Napoléon to create an extravagant clothing style among the elite. During the French revolution, youngsters apparently resisted the trend of clothes without extravagant styling, and this film shows how Galliano channels this through his fashion, with the repeated use of Napoléon drumming in his influence on the fashion designer’s work.

Director: Kevin MacDonald

Cast: John Galliano, Charlize Theron, Penélope Cruz, Edward Enninful, Naomi Campbell

Streamer: Mubi

The other, more fascinating portion of the film’s first half is so typical of the Kevin Macdonald brand of storytelling. First, through a mix of voiceover and fashion footage, Kevin shows Galliano's response to the abuse he faced in childhood for homosexual tendencies, and the resultant trauma. There is a portion about his father beating him for calling a young man “gorgeous.” Kevin juxtaposes this with a moment where Galliano, now a successful fashion designer, clad in a pink T-shirt that says “gorgeous,” walks the ramp with a couple of women. It is particularly provocative for the blink-and-you-miss-it way in which Kevin presents it, much like how he addresses Idi Amin’s meat-eater reputation in The Last King of Scotland. By this time, the film leaves you engrossed in its world-building, full of dramatic lighting that highlights the models and their garments, the clicking sound of cameras, and the energetic background music. For a good part, watching the film is like being on the front row of a fashion show, thanks mainly to the use of archive footage.

However, things become uncomfortably quiet after a sudden revelation: Galliano's anti-Semitic comments and his subsequent fall from grace. All of a sudden, you start noticing the lack of energy in the atmosphere. However, Kevin never leans too much towards or away from his subject. At the start, Edward Enninful calls Galliano the "rock and roll of fashion," and the film also involves everyone from Charlize Theron to Penélope Cruz showering him with praise. However, the film never restricts its subject to adulation; it also calls him out for what he did and does a good job of showing how fame gets to his head, how he becomes addicted to his job, and how he unravels emotionally. It makes you think about celebrities and the challenges of being them. John Galliano is one such case study.