Reviewed by Ramona Prioleau

Halston is a documentary film about the life of American fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick. The film, which stars Liza Minnelli and Joel Schumacher as themselves, among others, is framed, oddly, as a noir film. The style, which evokes film classics like Citizen Kane or Sunset Boulevard, is brought to the viewer by actress Tavi Gevinson, who plays a detective of sorts who is set on keeping Halston’s memory alive.

The campy frame device is novel and unconventional, but it’s ultimately unneeded, as where the film really shines is in its real-life detail. Real-life is stranger than fiction, and that could not be truer than in the case of Roy Halston. Halston has clearly been meticulously researched, and the work shows. From the interviews to the old footage, director Frédéric Tcheng makes it clear that this is someone who not only deserves the audience’s attention, but also their respect. The details and insight we get are so honest that the narration, which at first is simply odd, begins to get in the way a bit. The story speaks for itself – and the filmmakers should probably have let it.

That said, Halston is a fantastic, multi-layered portrait of a fascinating artist living in a fascinating time. Halston, whose own popularity grew alongside the rise of disco, has a story unlike almost anyone in the fashion industry or in American pop culture more broadly, and getting to hear his story told — not only by people who knew him and wore his clothes, but by people who want to make sure his story is heard — makes watching the film and its odder stylistic choices all the more worth it. M

February 2019