| this week's TRIBUNE review : 'A Letter To True' (2004) [6/10] |
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| Sunday, 03 August 2008 | |
 A Letter to True USA 2004 Documentary with : Bruce Weber, Elizabeth Taylor Director : Bruce Weber ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THIS summer several films by Bruce Weber - the American photographer best known for his fashion spreads and opulent coffee-table books - are popping up in certain British arthouse cinemas, part of an ongoing, touring retrospective. Weber has been so wildly successful in his 'day job' that he's been able to fund half a handful of these intimate, agreeably tangential, wildly self-indulgent little diary / journal / essay / scrapbook home-movies, easily the most celebrated being his 1988 Chet Baker tribute, Let's Get Lost. Retaining the free-floating structure of July's release Chop Suey (2001), Weber's noodling musings in A Letter To True (his most recently completed work for cinema) are very loosely held together by his affection for dogs - the eponymous 'True' being one of his beloved pooches. It's a "four-legs-good" fondness which happens to be shared by several of his celebrity pals including Dirk Bogarde and Elizabeth Taylor. These stars get a 'chapter' each before Weber drifts on to the next thing to grab his attention - like a beachcomber ambling along the sands of Montauk, the secluded, upmarket Long Island enclave where Weber and his pets prefer to frolic. Some of A Letter To True's subjects are social/political "issues" about which the film-maker seems genuinely concerned - the state of America post-9/11, the plight of Haitian refugees, etc - but his narration is never anything other than a gentle, slightly soft-headed, naive, child-like ramble. Needless to say, the sprawling mess of a confection that results won't be to everybody's tastes, and there's certainly no shortage of trite, naive juxtapositions along the way. It does feels mean to criticise Weber, however - doing so feels rather like scolding one of his puppies, all of them irresistibly, tail-waggingly desperate to please. And in these days when American non-fiction film tends to be dominated by the strident likes of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, it's perhaps quite healthy that such a different kind of voice can occasionally still be heard - even if it is that of a multi-millionaire who's cobbled together an ornately decadent soapbox out of flimsy celluloid. Neil Young 7th September 2004 // updated 22nd July 2008  A LETTER TO TRUE : [6/10] : US 2004 (copyright-dated 2003) : Bruce WEBER : 79m (BBFC timing) : seen Filmhouse Edinburgh : 20th August 2004 : Edinburgh International Film Festival (public show) : original review |
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