The success of a by-the-numbers bio-doc is often directly correlated to the charm and personality of its subject, and Love, Cecil squeezes every last drop of dry wit and camp drama out of its protagonist, the photographer and style genius Cecil Beaton. Strung together by excerpts from Beaton’s diaries, effectively narrated by a stern-sounding Rupert Everett, the film attempts to take a magnified look at the many lives Beaton led during 70-ish years of photos, fashion and folly – from his early days as a Bright Young Thing in 1920s London to his Oscar-winning career as a Hollywood costume designer. But this hunger for detail is also the film’s downfall: any one of these eras has the characters, visuals and plot to support its own documentary, and squishing them all into 98 minutes does justice to neither the finished product nor Beaton himself.
Love, Cecil | Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland (US 2017) documentary. Starts July 12.
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