IRIS

3.5 stars (out of 5)

Director Albert Maysles’ not-quite-final film (he died in March aged 88) isn’t as unforgettable as the documentaries he worked on with his late brother David (like Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens), but it isn’t intended as such, instead preferring to be a light yet fondly-felt chronicling of the life of 90ish New York fashion icon Iris Apfel, who peers into the camera often with her porthole-like spectacles.

‘Style Maven’ Iris is introduced accessorising and explaining how she adores to mix the chic with “the cheap” before venturing out of her Park Avenue apartment to one of a seemingly endless stream of events where she meets gushing fans and is asked to favourably comment upon models more than 70 years her junior. She makes a big impression in Maysles movie immediately, and soon she’s talking about growing up during the Depression, how her beloved Mom “worshipped at the altar of the accessory”, how she’s always had no rules in the style stakes (“It’s all gut!”) and how she thinks she’s never “been pretty”.

But that’s okay, she believes, as style isn’t about beauty, and certainly her longtime husband Carl (with whom she worked for years as a celebrated interior design team) adores her no matter how she looks, and whether or not she orders him around and tries to do all the talking for him, even at his 100th birthday party. And we certainly see her kindness, as she happily scratches around a Harlem jewelry shop for accessories (there’s that word again), cheerfully meets her admirers despite admitted exhaustion, cracks self-deprecating jokes and tries to set up Maysles with a friend (and we get a glimpse of the embarrassed director grinning).

For those obsessed with fashion, this should prove a revealing and entertaining opportunity to meet the indomitable Iris, and yet it could also be an enjoyable experience for those who loathe the whole style scene and wish to instead read it as a sweet, spirited study of one woman’s attempts to not get ‘old’. And that never goes out of style.