Style documentary “Valentino: The Last Emperor” brings legendary designer out of (semi?) retirement

By Freda Kunin

VENICE, Italy (Hollywood Today) 8/31/08 — Which of this year’s 22 films will win the coveted Golden Lion top prize is anyone’s guess, but on the red carpet, as well as on the silver screen, this year’s fashionable must-see is gloves down “Valentino: The Last Emperor” by Vanity Fair special correspondent Matt Tyrnauer.

This intimate, stylish and very human documentary reveals the life of Fashion Legend Valentino Garavandi.  For 45 years, women of refined taste the world over have competed feverishly with their fashion icon sisters Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Julia Roberts and Sophia Loren for their chance to own a genuine Valentino couturier creation.

At this week’s screening, Valentino walked the red carpet, joined by his three muses Charlize Theron, Diane Kruger and Elizabeth Hurley, all draped in glamorous Goddess-appropriate Valentino gowns.

Although Valentino took his final bow at the couture shows in Paris just this January, his impeccable style will forever influence Haute Couture and the wardrobes of fashionable women everywhere.

Valentino himself made headlines a couple of years ago when he threw an elaborate party in Rome attended by the who’s who of everywhere flying in from around the globe.

The designer was having another party in a Venice palazzo after the film and invitations were rare and apparently the hottest ticket.  We wouldn’t know as  we didn’t get there.  We went to a dinner party at the Excelsior Hotel for the Casino de Venezia, one of our favorite places on the Grand Canal.  A note to Valentino. We would have loved to come to the party and whisper sweet notions to the world about the delicious food, people, atmosphere and all the Valentino dresses on lithe female bodies and shirts on strapping young men but our imaginations can fill it all in. 

In other seam splitting news, the Coen Brothers’ “Burn After Reading” featured International favorites Brad Pitt, George Clooney and John Malkovich, as well as Academy Award winners Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton, all decked out in a nerd lovers’ tribute to Prep and Gym.  The color Red also made several jarring appearances, made bearable only by Pitt’s naturally cool demeanor.

More mayhem, glamour and surely news to report, can be expected this week when Venice is visited by shining stars Anne Hathaway & Debra Winger (“Rachel Getting Married”),  Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger (“The Burning Plain”) and our favorite bad boy Mickey Rourke (“The Wrestler’.)

Photos: Top – Elizabeth Hurley at Valentino film premiere in one of his classic gowns, of course. Below – the man himself. Cassandra Gava contributed to this report