FEW Australians, unless they have experienced the New York art scene, will have heard of Iris Apfel. The final work by documentarist Alfred Maysles can change that.
Why bother? Because Maysles’s portrait of a woman then aged 93, with an innate genius for bringing ordinary artefacts – clothes, furnishings, costume jewellery – into the light and showing their beauty, is, quite simply, 80 minutes of visual delight.
Iris as a young woman was attractive but not beautiful in the conventional sense. Her beauty lies in her talent for seeing what goes with which, turning cygnets into peacocks. Her passion is for style, not fashion. Her achievements bring what people wear or hang over their windows into a limelight transcending often humble origins.
Unconstrained by a structured plot, Maysles’s film simply accompanies Iris and photographer husband Carl, himself no less a character than her, in their journey through life via what we might today call op-shops. The pair owns several houses, most of which are nothing more than repositories for what Iris has collected. Individually, the pieces are interesting. Collectively, they turn into delectable visions.
At Palace Electric
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