Cast: Brunello Cucinelli, Francesco Cannevale, Francesco Ferroni, Saul Nanni Review by Carol Allen
The attraction for me was the director, Giuseppe Tornatore. After nearly forty years I still retain fond memories of this his Oscar winning film Cinema Paradiso (1988). In recent years however Tornatore has branched out into other storytelling forms – tv drama, documentaries and also promotional material for the perfume Dolce & Gabbana.
The subject of his documentary Brunello: The Gracious Visionary is of course the aforesaid Brunello Cucinelli – and it’s an interesting though not totally successful mixture of styles in the way it tells the story of Brunello’s rise to fame and fortune.
Brunello was born in 1953 to a peasant family in Umbria struggling with poverty. His rustic childhood, misspent young manhood and early rise to fame and fortune are dealt with in dramatized recreations in that gorgeously romantic, typical Italian period film style with our hero played by some very good looking young actors as Brunello the child, adolescent and young man (Francesco Cannevale, Francesco Ferroni and Saul Nanni respectively). Brunello’s fortunes change when he discovers cashmere in the 70s, and starts using it to make brightly coloured, high fashion and high priced items for the very rich.
The interviews are standard documentary style with clients such as Oprah Winfrey and indeed Signora Cucinelli herself. All a bit over full of praise perhaps, though the story of how he made his millions is interesting from the point of view of learning about the industry and his very expensive posh woolies. Where the film becomes more than somewhat cringeworthy however is when we have Brunello talking about himself, of which there is a lot. He don’t ‘arf come over as fancying himself! He is credited as one of the producers of the film, which he actually commissioned.
To be fair to him, as fashion millionaires go, he’s one of the good guys, practicing what he terms “humanist capitalism”, which means he treats his workers well and pays them properly. But even so, much of film comes across as a very high production value promotion for the brand and its charming but big headed creator.
It might have been better had this either been a more conventional documentary with Brunello being interviewed rather than bigging himself up to camera, or even better to have fictionalised the whole thing as a feature film about a live person, as Rocket Man did with Elton John or The Social Network with Mark Zuckerberg. But I guess what Brunello wants, Brunello gets.
About the Author
