Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards

Manolo Blah­nik, founder of the famous shoe brand that wears his name, holds out a sur­re­al sketch of a stilet­to dec­o­rat­ed with flow­ers to the cam­era. ​“Oh, I’m sor­ry, don’t you see? I think you see this non­sense; this is real­ly embar­rass­ing.” The shoe is obvi­ous­ly not meant to be part of his newest col­lec­tion, but mere­ly an expres­sion of the man’s bound­less cre­ativ­i­ty. Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards is pre­cise­ly that: an expres­sion of cre­ativ­i­ty that turns out to be non­sen­si­cal and at times embarrassing.

This doc­u­men­tary by direc­tor Michael Roberts – a British fash­ion writer and artist who also hap­pens to be a good friend of Manolo – is not rev­o­lu­tion­ary in its talk­ing head for­mat, filled to the brim with god-like praise for the design­er and his work by a ridicu­lous num­ber of famous fash­ion icons such as Anna Win­tour, Andre Leon Tal­ley and his lat­est col­lab­o­ra­tor Rihanna.

These tes­ti­monies are shot in vibrant colour, con­trast­ed with black-and-white pic­tures and archive clips from the past, as they guide us through his career in the first half. Along­side these colour-con­trast­ed sequences are reen­act­ments with an over­ly hand­some young actor play­ing the subject.

When the sto­ry catch­es up to the present, the doc­u­men­tary is only half-way through. It seems like the two friends got lost try­ing to cram all of their ideas in one movie (the pair even told the New York Times they are work­ing on a sec­ond film). The only thing they for­got is Manolo’s human­i­ty. Who he real­ly is – his feel­ings, regrets or fail­ures. This vital infor­ma­tion doesn’t make it to the movie.

Even when he talks about friends who passed away, the man does not show an ounce of emo­tion. Just like Dis­ney char­ac­ters who wear gloves always have some­thing to hide, Manolo is almost nev­er seen with­out his white gloves. His mod­esty and wit is very charm­ing but feels like a dis­guise, not only from his real self but the documentary’s lack of objec­tiv­i­ty. His mis­sion to make every ​“ordi­nary” woman feel beau­ti­ful is framed as noble, yet the price of a Manolo heel is skil­ful­ly ignored.