Did Karl Lagerfeld’s cat Choupette inherit the designer’s great fortune?
Choupette is at the centre of a new film about the legendary German designer and his estate, estimated to be worth north of $US200m.
The Mysterious Mr Lagerfeld (M)
Prime Video
★★★½
“My job is to make believe,” observed high fashion god Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019). “But I have to be careful because I can turn myself into a cartoon.”
He spoke the truth. The permanent sunglasses, the detachable starched white collars, the fingerless black gloves, the fortune and associated tax problems, the ballooning and then the dramatic weight loss and, above all, the Burmese cat named Choupette.
Did Choupette inherit most of the German designer’s estate, estimated to be worth north of $US200m?
There are perhaps two people who know the answer: his lawyer and his accountant.
The lawyer, Celine Degoulet, is interviewed in The Mysterious Mr Lagerfeld, a fascinating documentary written and directed by British filmmaker Michael Waldman.
In one of the many quirky aspects of this film, which balances admiration for the subject with mischievousness about his life, the lawyer laughs out loud throughout.
Waldman is the interviewer. He asks Degoulet if she has seen the will. She laughs and says of course she has.
She adds, “I will not tell you what’s inside.” Then she laughs some more.
The accountant who drew up the will, Lucien Frydlender, is not interviewed. He more or less vanished soon after Lagerfeld’s death. It’s rumoured he’s somewhere in Switzerland.
It’s believed the childless Lagerfeld’s still-unexecuted will names seven beneficiaries. Whether one is Choupette is unclear. Waldman does meet her, but she disdains his interview request.
Others are thought to be his long-time bodyguard, who is French, and two male models, one American, one French, he was close to later in his life.
Waldman playfully introduces everyone by moniker, a bit like a game of Cluedo.
There’s The Bodyguard, The Male Model, The Neighbour (Lagerfeld “was the strangest person I ever met”), The Former Friend, The Butler, The Cat Agent (Choupette’s personal wealth is about €3m, or $5m) and The Cat Nanny, whom Lagerfeld paid upfront: about $US4m.
He interviews each of them and lots of Lagerfeld’s other friends and colleagues. He also speaks to Lagerfeld’s US-based niece, who remembers how her uncle not only made her wedding dress but flew it to her home in a Concorde.
He asks direct questions and, except from the lawyer, receives direct and often surprising answers, such as when he asks the ridiculously handsome French model whether he and Lagerfeld, 50 years his senior, were intimate.
As I watched him respond I thought of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and, as good filmmakers often do, minutes later one of the other interviewees compared the model to the beautiful – and untouched – teenage Tadzio of that 1912 novella.
This goes to Lagerfeld’s sex life, or lack of it, and perhaps partly explains his love of his feline friend. He also speaks throughout, from archival interviews, and comes across as a man who found distasteful the idea of combining affection and sex.
While Lagerfeld’s will and Choupette are central – and thoroughly enjoyable – this 88-minute film also explores the Hamburg-born designer’s rise through the pin-sharp world of high fashion.
His comments on French designer Coco Chanel, made soon after she died and he took over her business, show why he could make headlines for the wrong reasons.
He lived in Paris and Monte Carlo. He was a workaholic. He was a reader and thinker. And, while this movie pokes around his eccentricities, it also shows his deep intellectual life. At his death, his personal library contained about 300,000 books.
The proprietor of his favourite Paris bookshop is interviewed. She goes through her records to detail the extraordinary range of subjects Lagerfeld devoured.
His total spend at this one bookshop that he visited in person? About $US20,000 a year. When you spend that much on literature, who can complain if you decide to put out a book about your cat, as Lagerfeld did in 2016.
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You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah (M)
Netflix
★★½
The coming-of-age comedy You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah stars Adam Sandler, his wife Jackie and their two teenage daughters Sadie and Sunny.
He and fellow actor Jackie met on the set of the 1999 comedy Big Daddy, which shares some themes – such as the weight of adulthood – with this new film.
Their daughters have had small parts in some of Sandler’s films. This time it’s leading roles and they are quite accomplished. Even so, the funniest moments involve the old man, which is humorous in itself as another theme is generational change.
Two 13-year-old BFFs (best friends forever) are helping each other plan their bat mitzvahs, the Judaism ceremony through which they leave childhood and become adults.
Well, sort of. “It’s important to you and other old people and god,’’ Stacy (Sunny Sandler) tells her dad Danny (Sandler) about the religious side to this ritual for Jewish girls and boys.
What she and her friend Lydia (Samantha Lorraine) care about is the party afterwards. It’s there that their futures will be decided.
Stacy wants a mojito bar at hers, to which her father replies, “That’s why we fought the Nazis, so you could have a mojito bar.” This loving dad is laid-back with a hint of edge.
Lydia’s mother Gabi (Jackie Sandler) wouldn’t say no to a bar of any kind. She’s divorcing her husband Eli (Luis Guzman, who is fun to watch).
Stacy’s mother Bee (Idina Menzel) is busy keeping her husband and their two headstrong daughters (Sadie Sandler is the older sister Ronnie) at peace with each other.
Stacy has a huge crush on Andy (Dylan Hoffman, no relation to Dustin), “the hottest guy in the seventh grade”. Sunny Sandler is excellent at showing the immobilising impact of teenage love.
Then something happens that makes Stacy and Lydia reconsider whether they really are BFFs. It also makes Stacy rethink her feelings for Andy.
The funniest scene happens soon after. Stacy is refilling her bucket of popcorn at the cinema. A group of friends, including Lydia and Andy, turn up. Out wanders Stacy’s dad, clad in a bathrobe that might have been designed by Jackson Pollock, to find out why the refill is taking so long.
It’s an experience any teenager knows and fears. In a nice touch, the cinema is screening a festival of films by John Hughes, a master of angsty teen comedies.
From here the question is whether Stacy and Lydia will still have their bat mitzvahs (Sarah Sherman is good as their offbeat rabbi) and the subsequent parties and if they do whether they will help or undermine each other.
This 103-minute movie is directed by Sammi Cohen and written by Alison Peck. It’s based on Fiona Rosenbloom’s 2005 young adult novel of the same name. It’s a light-hearted comedy that is easy to watch, especially for the Sandler Sr moments. When Stacy outlines the Manhattan theme of her extravagant party plans, he tells her his bat mitzvah was held in his grandmother’s basement. “The theme? The theme was being Jewish!”
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