‘High & Low: John Galliano’: Telluride Review

Dir. Kevin Macdonald. UK. 2023. 117mins

Audiences for Kevin McDonald’s documentary about Dior’s notoriously troubled creative genius John Galliano may be self-selecting — they’ll have watched McQueen, or The September Issue — but between the highs-and-lows of razzle-dazzle couture there a substantial film here, and a frank portrait of a damaged, evasive man trying to come to terms with what he has done. Taking the shape of a confessional by Galliano, a man forever shadowed by his drunken anti-semitic public outbursts, Macdonald’s portrait may be empathetic, but it never lets Gibraltar-born Galliano off the hook – especially when it comes to convenient memory lapses. And in the middle of the sadness and the self-destruction, there is still a sense of why the man born Juan Carlos is still a beloved figure for those who know him.

Macdonald’s portrait may be empathetic, but it never lets Gibraltar-born Galliano off the hook

Macdonald’s skill as a documentarian is evident in High & Low’s structure and gravitas. The film is listed as having the production involvement of Conde Nast, and there is evidence of its executives (Anna Wintour, the late Andre Leon Talley) in heroic mode. It certainly has access. But Macdonald’s head is not turned, and his documentary remains tightly focused on the somewhat broken figure of Galliano himself. A MUBI title, it is set for release in late December, after a launch at Telluride, and while High & Low will certainly attract attention in whatever format it screens, there is a case here for the big screen to match the size of the young Galliano’s artistry and ambition.

As High & Low progresses, the viewer arrives at a certain sense of relief that Galliano is still alive to tell the tale — his fellow Brit Alexander McQueen did not survive, and neither did his right-hand man at Dior, Steven Robinson, who died from a cocaine overdose and whose loss seems to have pushed Galliano into his final collapse. The fresh-faced Galliano himself, seen here first in archival footage from his smash Central St Martins graduate show, is allowed to tell his own cautionary tale, and it is primarily one of addiction. Drugs and alcohol, certainly, come as no surprise, but it was also to the gym, to his looks and, above all, to work – an addiction Dior demanded with 32 shows a year at the height of his career. (When his secretary told Galliano’s boss about his blackout drunkenness, Galliano himself was informed and allowed to spitefully fire her instead of agreeing to any treatment. He was, in part, a monster, and he was certainly enabled.)

Macdonald is allowed access to Galliano’s sister, who acknowledges that John avoided his family once he became a success. The son of traditional Gibraltarian Catholic Spaniards (his plumber father had Italian roots), he was beaten as a child and taunted for being a ‘marricon’. Moving to East London at the age of seven, fashion was an escape, as were the far-flung worlds where he sought his inspiration; he was preternaturally talented, but also still living at home when he started out at St Martins. His success opened a glittering cave and he fell head-first into all of it. Now, he talks to Macdonald, figuring it all out in his own manner. 

To his credit, Galliano makes no excuses for his anti-Semitic outbursts in a variety of Paris bars in 2012. They were horrible. He says he still does not understand the reasons behind them and,  although he embarked on a course of self-education and apology, he can still seem very self-involved to the point where, although he has had awareness teaching from a British Rabbi, he still has not apologised to the people he racially taunted and then tried to sue for defamation. It seems very unlikely that the rants caught on camera were the only times he was this vile, racially or otherwise. He’s not an easy read yet, at the same time, he’s still a likeable man and a remarkable talent. 

Fashion documentaries tend to do very well – all that glamour, especially when some old ‘supers’ turn up for the ride – Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, but also Charlize Theron, who has an inside track due to her own traumatic upbringing as to how people can morally disintegrate. It is shocking to watch Campbell defend Galliano while admitting she has not seen the video of his outbursts; one wonders if she would feel the same way if his insults were aimed at Black people instead of Jews.

As a film, though, High & Low is cut from a better cloth than the norm: in a world of fantasy, it tries to be real. It runs close to two hours, but editor Aydhesh Mohla finds a back-and-forth rhythm which keeps the pace tight and gentle. Reality for John Galliano, now the creative director of Maison Margiela, is never going to match anyone else’s perception of the world, but this stands as a generous and independently-minded insight of a man still grappling with who he really is, if there’s anyone left at all.