Dior and I

When fashion designer Christian Dior published his memoir in 1956, the title he chose for the book was Christian Dior & I, a reference to his bifurcated self, his "Siamese twin ... the man in the public eye, and Christian Dior, private individual."

Frederic Tcheng's documentary makes liberal use of the book, quoting it extensively in voice-over. But the movie is less about Dior, the man, who died a year after his book came out, than it is about Raf Simons, a minimalist designer from Belgium who was named creative director of the luxury goods company in 2012. Simons is a preternaturally calm and straightforward individual who claims not to be the least bit concerned with Dior's ghost, whom some believe literally haunts the design house's Paris headquarters.

The film picks up with Simons being introduced to the artists and craftsmen in the Dior atelier. He greets them in unsteady French before switching to English and then, with the help of his "right hand," Pieter Mulier, dives straight into a redoubtable challenge: creating the new Dior collection, a process that normally consumes six months or more, in eight weeks.

It's this Mission: Impossible aspect that provides Dior and I with a sense of palpable tension, and which might make it palatable for viewers who give not a whit for haute couture. Dior's staff comes off as a tight bunch of pros, experienced (some have been with the house for 40 years) and highly capable, but the urgency of the deadline stresses them to the breaking point. Tcheng's cameras follow the process from Simons' early sketches, inspired by the graffiti/tie-dyed paintings of Sterling Ruby, to final fitting. Will they make it? Will the line -- comprised of dresses that can cost up to $350,000 each -- be well-received? There at least seems to be some doubt as the seamstresses work furiously to produce a show to dazzle celebrities and journalists.

Simons comes off as a curiously down-to-earth sort given the stereotypically vivid personalities who dominate the fashion world. At times he seems like a reluctant participant in the drama, and his assistant Mulier evinces the more dynamic personality, playing the "good cop" to Simons' taciturn taskmaster. Simons seems uninterested in celebrity and remarkably unpretentious; at one point, he admits he couldn't finish Dior's memoir because it struck him as "weird."

Tcheng keeps coming back to the memoir in an attempt to imbue the film with an extra layer of metaphysical gravitas, but the doc, which is otherwise assembled in a direct-cinema style reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman, really doesn't need it. The admittedly familiar story of the designer and his team racing against time -- basically the same narrative as Wim Wenders' fashion doc Notebook on Cities and Clothes and Matt Tyrnauer's Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) -- is sufficient to hold our interest.

MovieStyle on 05/15/2015