Oh dear! what can I say ? In my last post I quoted Bazin about reviews: “Let us say that the ideal would be to be able to help efficiently those we like and to have little influence on the fate of others. ” I am at a loss to say anything about Advanced Style,  Ari Cohen’s film released this week in the UK . Suffice to say that I walked out three quarters through it, not able to bear the excruciating boredom anymore.

Repetitive, superficial, women as  clothes horses, the film goes from seven old women photographed informally in the streets of New York to them being elevated to the status of celebrities.  Cohen’s blog that was fun becomes a film of no interest.

I will leave this documentary alone but will only say that Cohen does what Bourne in Fabulous Fashionistas did not: reduce women to what they wear.  I notice that our prominent critics, Kermode (Observer), Macnab (Independent), Bradshaw (The Guardian), Andrews (Financial Times), give the film 3 out of 5 stars. Why?

Daniel Green,  (cine-vue.com) declares : “There’s not a great deal beyond the dazzling glitz and gaud”, but still gives it 3 stars. I understand that. The site is an iTunes site that needs to sell the film. But why are our broadsheets critics so uncritical? Have  they never met old women who are more interesting than these exhibitionist characters? Old women who do not speak in clichés, and express a strong personality?

Undeserved praise is more damaging than a reasoned attack. Is this an example of ageism in different clothes?

For people interested  in clothes as theatre :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Piaggi

http://advancedstyle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/raga-woods.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/XkbrU+(ADVANCED+STYLE)&m=1

When I complained in a workshop that Raga attended,  that older women are invisible, Raga replied to me: I am not. People stop me in the street and talk to me.