Kate's Film Club: Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?
Our resident film buff 💪Kate Corcoran, is starting the valiant effort of highlighting, celebrating, and swooning over some of the most fashionable films out there. Stay tuned for more chic cinema...
If your thumb is tired of scrolling fashion Pinterest, pop this movie on. It will provide the high you’re looking for without cramping your lil' fingers.
Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? is aesthetically so much fun. It’s a mockumentary slash, surrealist slash, fantasy slash, just a very-very-French movie. It starts with this totally amazing fashion show where the models are treated like objects. (It was giving me flashbacks to my time at art school...) They are thrown about, get injured, and are never looked at in the eye or listened to when they’re talking. The fashion showgoers even touch the clothes as they come down the runway. It was jarring. No respect!!
We meet Polly at the fashion show as one of the models. Subsequently, we follow her throughout the movie as she moves around Paris. And the streets of Paris turn out to be just like the fashion show.
Polly cannot be out in public without dudes literally throwing themselves at her. They are grabbing her body, asking for her hand in marriage, and cutting her hair just to have a little piece of her. Again, it's so jarring. She takes it all in stride, though, as if this is the consequence of what it’s like to be a beautiful woman.
The movie moves non-linearly, where sometimes you think you’re watching the next scene in the story, but actually, it’s an 8-minute dream. And you don’t really know that until 20 minutes later. I found it a bit… confusing.
I know there are a lot of movie people out there who think Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? is just so brilliant, but it didn’t really do it for me. The costumes, make-up, and sets, however, are perfection. I think that’s kinda all this movie is – looks. A shallow aesthetic visual. And is that maybe the genius of it? A satire of the fashion industry that’s all surface, no depth?? Damn, wait. Maybe this movie is great.
Other notes worth mentioning:
- The scene of the models lining up is so damn good. I can’t believe it’s not an iconic female dorm room poster.
- I watched this during a heatwave and was so jealous of that chair with the attached fan.
- Fascinating how much the male haters were shitting on the skinny models, calling them “broomsticks” and saying they are stripped of all their best assets (t&a.) Ah, you can’t win!
- I need to take that personality test.
- The big white billowy wedding dress is sooooooo stunning to me.
- I can do without all the American hate speech at the wedding dinner, thank you very much.
Final Rating
I’m rating Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? 56/100 fake eyelashes.
To read all of Kate’s wildly deep and complex reviews, follow @katecorcoran on Letterboxd!
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