Notebook on cities and clothes

Egocentric Dutch director Wim (My American Friend) Wenders attempted the impossible with Notebook on Cities and Clothes: he had been commissioned by the director of the Pompidou Centre to look at the fashion industry through a 1988 documentary centred on the working style of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, a long-haired man in black clothes constantly.

Initially, Wenders focused on his own thoughts about cities, life and identity in the digital age. That provided a rationale for including camcorder replays of Yamamoto interview comments on materials, inspirations and other fashion pointers.

When the designer speaks Japanese, subtitle translations convey the words of his thoughts clearly even if the thoughts are vague. Unfortunately, most of the time Yamamoto murmurs in the English language, hesitantly as well as vaguely. It's hard, and unrewarding, to try and follow his chugging trains of thought.

Wenders' cameramen watch Yamamoto in his workhop, snipping and arranging cloth. Truly inscrutable and seemingly shy, the designer is not an exciting documentary subject to observe or listen to. So Wenders takes him to a billiards hall to ask some questions in a livelier and slightly more colourful setting than in Yamamoto's monochromatic environment.

[Interestingly, Yamamoto subsequently developed a second career as a movie costume designer, including work on four productions for the prolific actor-director Takeshi Kitano between 2000 and 2005.]

[Wenders, also a workaholic, has directed a further 26 titles so far, 15 of which were full-length features or documentaries. He's garnered nominations for an Oscar and a BAFTA (for Ry Cooder's scintillating 1998 documentary Buena Vista Social Club), having already won a BAFTA for Paris, Texas in 1984.]