Iris

Iris Apfel lives in New York and her wardrobes have eaten the flat. Bracelets brought from Africa, beads found on the street, an expensive coat and a three dollar necklace worn with it. Her rule is simple: what a thing cost does not matter, how it stands with the rest does. Her husband Carl is close to a hundred and watches her. Iris goes to the storage unit, haggles, advises museums, teaches at a university. The camera follows and the woman talks. Albert Maysles directs. It is an American production and a documentary. Maysles was a director in his nineties who had been making documentaries for fifty years; with his brother David he is counted among the founders of direct cinema. The film screened at the 2014 New York Film Festival and reached cinemas the following year; Maysles died in March 2015, so the release came shortly after the director's death. Apfel was in her nineties during the shoot and still working. The matter it treats is style; the film takes fashion not as an industry but as one person's way of building herself. The documentary makes no argument and adds no commentary; the camera watches and the person talks. The relationship between Carl and Iris is the quietest and the best part of it. Its limit is depth; the narrative stays on the surface, there is no chronology, and no critical distance is set. Who it is for: viewers who like fashion, design and portrait documentary. Who it is not for: the structure is loose, the subject narrow, and the narrative bounded by admiration.