Butler's Cinema Scene

“McQUEEN”  My rating: B-  

111 minutes | MPAA rating: R

That designer Alexander McQueen was an artistic genius is beyond debate.

The question posed — and only partially answered — by the new documentary “McQueen” is: “Just how screwed up was he?”

McQueen hanged himself in 2010 on the eve of his mother’s funeral. During his two decades in fashion he had gone from impeccably tailored Saville Row suits for men to bizarre runway shows that often were more about performance art — and indulging his own  obsessions — than about creating a sellable line.

He was a rebel and a disruptor. One of his most notorious shows — 1995’s Highland Rape — featured disheveled models who seemed to have stumbled away from a sexual assault. The fashion world was appalled and many condemned the young designer as a misogynist.

Ian Bonhomie and Peter Ettedgul’s film dispels that notion — women were among McQueen’s best friends and most loyal collaborators — but it never does nail the sources of their subject’s neuroses and inspirations.

Young Alexander McQueen…

Known to his friends and family as Lee (Alexander, his middle name, was considered more artsy), he grew up a pudgy fellow with a beaming face and an eagerness that seems quite at odds with the darkness of his vision. Later on he slimmed down, grew a goatee and became sexier but less likable. Perhaps learning that he was HIV positive had something to do with it.

The doc follows McQueen’s rise from fashion bad boy to industry icon (in his relatively short career he led both Givenchy and Gucci, with mixed results).  Much of his work was costumey in the extreme (watching this film one cannot stop asking: “Who the hell would wear that…and where?”). But in his maturity

…and in his slimmed-down maturity

he was capable of creating terrifically wearable (if always eye-catching) designs.