Funny Face

Starring:Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn Directed by: Stanley Donen Runtime: 110 min. Rated: Not Rated DVD Release date: October 10, 2007 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
7.3 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 7 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 8 Funny . . . . . . . . 7

The Nerve Review

Funny Face (1957) re-entered the American imagination last year, when a Gap commercial used Audrey Hepburn's beatnik dance (re-set to "Back in Black") to advertise pants. At the time, there was some moaning about a classic Hollywood icon being used commercially without her consent. But there's never been a more appropriate movie to co-opt for a fashion ad than Funny Face — it's the cinematic equivalent of flipping through Vogue.

A rare shot-on-location musical, Funny Face tells the paper-thin story of a prominent magazine editor (Kay Thompson) and a world-weary fashion photographer (Fred Astaire) who find an unlikely muse (Audrey Hepburn) amid the stacks of a Greenwich Village bookstore. Hepburn's character, Jo, is obsessed with a pseudo-philosophy called "empathicalism" and wants nothing to do with the fashion world — yet she is easily persuaded to accompany the magazine folks to Paris, where she morphs into a high-fashion model and falls in love with Astaire's character.

Richard Avedon art-directed, which is probably why every frame looks like a magazine spread — gorgeously composed, with colors so vivid that you want to lick them off the screen. Audrey Hepburn, still new to Hollywood, radiates an energy so young, fresh and naïve that it would almost be embarrassing, if it weren't so mesmerizing. If Funny Face consisted solely of Audrey Hepburn posing around Paris in her Givenchy costumes (its best sequence is exactly that), it would be a knockout.

Alas, the film wastes its energy establishing a romance between Hepburn and Astaire. Never does their instant love connection seem plausible; Astaire, with his schlubby cardigans and slangy delivery, is not nearly glamorous enough to snag a refined, elegant young girl. Although Astaire was fifty-eight during shooting (thirty years Hepburn's senior), he seems even older; when he shimmies up a balcony to serenade Hepburn, you worry he's going to fall and break something.

Even the musical numbers fail to impress. Astaire's dances are stunning technical feats, but they lack the suave, playful charm of his youth; long gone is the man in Top Hat who woke up an entire hotel with his irresistible midnight impulse to tap dance. Hepburn holds her own with the dancing, but her singing does Gershwin no favors. (Her next major musical, My Fair Lady, would be dubbed.) All of these flaws hearken back to the film's primary sin: it takes itself far too seriously. If Funny Face had embraced its shining satirical moments (the Greenwich Village bookstore is called "Embryo Concepts"), it could have been a fine, stylish farce. Instead, director Stanley Donen forges ahead with a strained Cinderella story, while making the dubious assertion that the fashion world is somehow more honest than the intellectual world. It almost works better as a Gap ad. — Gwynne Watkins

DVD EXTRAS: Only one of the three featurettes, "Parisian Dreams," is specifically about Funny Face. The others are about Hepburn and Givenchy (no new territory covered here), and Paramount in the '50s (basically a big ad for their other reissued DVDs). All three are under ten minutes yet manage to feel padded.