First-time filmmaker Lina Plioplyte’s warm documentary Advanced Style can best be summed up by a simple but succinct quote from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay: “beauty is whatever gives joy.”
After all this luminous enlightening look at a handful of New York’s most stylish senior citizens bears witness to the strength and character of identity and spotlights the jubilance that creativity has yielded these chic ladies so late in their lives.
Based on shutterbug Ari Seth Cohen’s popular blog of street photography of the same name Advanced Style simply begins with the 31-year-old Manhattanite patrolling the boulevards of the five boroughs stalking various senescent strangers so that he can take their photo for his blog.
While this scenario might seem creepy at first on the streets of New York it’s not unfeasible for a fashion photographer to randomly take your pic — even if you are at retirement age. As exemplified in Advanced Style not only are the well-dressed elderly ladies of Manhattan willing to stop and participate they’re eager to share their philosophies and street knowledge of how their unique styles have helped promote their longevity. “New York is the perfect place for advanced style ladies” explains Cohen. “Because they can use the broad avenues and the streets as their runways.”
Sixty-two-year-old Tziporah Salamon even takes pride in cycling around town without a helmet to “show off her outfits on a bike.” You can’t break up a good ensemble just for a little bit of safety after all.
To that end all seven women (the oldest is well into her 90s) consider themselves artists — and certainly their individual sense of quirky style backs that up. They also argue that New York is as important to their vitality as anything. Even Cohen (who co-produced the film with Plioplyte) was convinced by his grandmothers to move across the country from California because if he “wanted to be creative he should move to New York.”
Each of the ladies shares a particularly uplifting sense of New York attitude as well. A favourite is flame-haired 93-year-old Ilona Royce Smithkin — a singer and painter who proudly exhibits a casual picture she sketched of Ayn Rand that now adorns the back of the provocative author’s influential books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
The effervescence of the film’s elderly group of seven is undeniably infectious but at less than 80 minutes in length the exploration does become stale and desperately needs a shot of deeper sophistication. It’s all well and good to watch these wonderful women aging with grace and grandeur but Plioplyte concentrates too much time paying all-out tribute and not enough effort investigating beyond the surface of these well-seasoned seniors. At their age (and experience) there’s clearly more behind their respective looks than just a casual flitting fashion choice and without the exploration of that story this documentary ends up slightly shopworn.
Steve Gow is the creator and write of StrictlyDocs.com
ADVANCED STYLE directed by Lina Plioplyte opens on Friday February 13.
