Andrew Rossi, Anna Wintour, José Neves, Jane Rosenthal and Andrew Bolton attend the "First Monday In May" world premiere during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival opening night at BMCC John Zuccotti Theater on April 13, 2016 in New York City.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
A documentary about the unholy alliance between New York's Metropolitan Museum, couturier fashion and Hollywood celebrities, The First Monday in May ends with a puzzling postscript. After we have watched the triumphant conclusion of the museum's multimillion-dollar fundraiser for its Costume Institute, the credits roll. And then the film cuts to Vogue's editorial offices to show a few scenes that magazine staffers may wish had been left on the cutting-room floor.
The editors joke amongst themselves about the choices their infamous boss, editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, will make for the layout of the Met gala photo spread before she duly appears and behaves as predicted. Later, one staffer slaps down the final, glossy product with glee, saying this isn't about the Met, it's about this – Vogue itself.
If New York documentarian Andrew Rossi really wanted viewers to conclude that the Met has been used as celeb bait for the glossy magazine, then he would need to create a film much more tightly focused on that splashy fundraiser where couturiers dress the red carpet parade while socialites jostle for seats at the A-list tables.
Instead, he spends as much time on China: Through the Looking Glass, the problematic exhibition of Chinese-inspired couture that the gala launches, wading into questions about Orientalism and fashion as fine art. In short, there is an awful lot going on in this behind-the-scenes doc with its fabulous access, too much for Rossi to do true justice to his themes.
Of course, having too much material is a nice problem to have. Rossi seems to have been granted almost unlimited access to film at the Met and at Vogue as Wintour, who chairs the gala committee, prepares the fundraiser that is the social highlight of the New York season while curator Andrew Bolton builds an exhibition he hopes will finally beat the attendance record of a previous blockbuster that cemented his reputation.
There are many deliciously revealing moments, including discussions about who will sit where at the gala – there has to be a celebrity at every table – and whether Vogue can afford to pay Rihanna twice the usual fee to entertain the guests. On the curatorial side, Asian art curator Maxwell Hearn is clearly unhappy about the way the fashion show threatens to take over his gallery while Chinese donors and contributors are uneasy about a show that seems focused on a narrow view of Chinese exoticism.
The first half of the film deals mainly with Bolton's bold curatorial plans while various designers and curators discuss whether high fashion is an art form. The creation of the China show could itself make an excellent subject for a documentary but since Rossi is also covering the fundraiser here, he leaves viewers in the lurch on several issues.
He shows Wintour and Bolton being interviewed by a journalist who asks reasonable questions about whether the show might suggest the only thing valuable about China is antique to which they give feeble answers and later, once the journalist has left but Rossi's camera is still rolling, dismiss with a wave of the hand. The very real critical issues the China show raises – Bolton gets some serious advice from a Chinese collaborator who warns him against mixing images of Mao with those of Buddha – are then abandoned as the gala looms.
Of course, that gala is also an excellent topic for a doc: Contemporary journalism should spend less time celebrating celebrity culture and more time exposing it, and this doc starts down that road. However, it hasn't really got a smoking gun, and instead it goes chasing after red herrings, particularly the question of whether Wintour is actually a dragon lady.
Perhaps if Rossi had begun where he ends, with the bold assertion that this project is not about raising money for art but about using celebs to sell magazines, The First Monday in May might prove as enlightening as it is titillating. What does Rihanna get paid? We don't know because, as a staffer names the actual sum, the filmmaker bleeps the words.