A waste of 90 minutes of my life

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is a very under-rated film. Aneurin Barnard is magnetic as the confident, stubborn impertinent Cockney photographer David Bailey who crashes through the stuffy British fashion establishment with his talent, passion and determination. Instead of making him a figure of fun, or a caricature, Barnard shows how Bailey sticks up for what he senses is the right way to do his photographs. And he does have excellent instincts. His clashes with the ultra posh Vogue editor, played by Helen McCrory, are emblematic of the establishment fashion world clashing sharply with the gung-ho youth culture in the 1960s. As the model Jean Shrimpton, Karen Gillan has a quiet, doe-like, yet intelligent and otherworldly quality -- she has the X factor that makes her convincing in the role. ''I'm not changing nothing,'' says Bailey. He's willing to put his career on the line to have artistic control. Sure, it IS just about fashion, but it's a beautifully made film made with real passion and heart.

never heard of these people! so i decided to watch and find out.first i could not understand some of the dialog due to that inner city British accent - sorry. then the editing jumped around so. the story line is disjointed early on so you cannot get to know these characters. it was as if the director was in a fuss to get to the NYC scenes.the NYC part of the film is much more interesting and in that the characters shine. unfortunately they must have hired a 10 year old to do the 'tourist' snap shots of the city as those photos were just awful an added nothing to the story. we know they are in 'the big city'.the two strong willed leads and the insecure model slowly become a bit unbelievable and then the shows over!will not watch again.

Lordy, what can one say that is positive about this farcical retro-homage to the rise of the 60's first supermodel Jean Shrimpton and bad boy photographer, David Bailey. Swinging 60s London was yet to happen when the stuffy, privileged world of British Vogue was invaded by the street-wise Bailey whose black and white grainy high contrast fashion sense was yet the norm. Shrimpton as depicted by Doctor Who's Karen Gillian is a moon-face, country virgin who falls for the brash photog and is promptly toss to the curb by her screaming, conservative middle class father who sees his daughter as a fallen woman. It was after all the era of the new pill and good girls were still pure until marriage!! Given the assignment to photograph a new spread for Vogue in New York City, Bailey and Shrimp head out with the uptight, Lady Clare Rendlesham (Helen McCrory) to recreate the tired, status quo look which British Vogue had presented since WWII. With lots of head butting between Bailey and Rendlesham over tasteful lady-like poses, camera focal range, and the NYC skyline, Shrimpton sees her budding career going down in flames. Slightly idiotic dialogue is meant to convey the class differences between the blue collar Bailey and Shrimpton and Rendlesham, the "posh" women he finds unwilling to give him the opportunity as the innovative artist with the camera. But the work speaks for itself as contact sheets arrive in London and the situation comes to a head with the expected happy ending. Bailey forever alters British Vogue, Jean becomes the exquisite iconic face of the 60s, and London swings despite the conservative government.Barnard as confrontational Bailey is heavy fisted but charming, and the venerable Helen McCrory as the staid Lady Tasteful Clare Rendlesham offers a strident performance that is almost laughable. However, it is the woeful Ms. Gillian as The Shrimp who makes the production painful to view. Jean Shrimpton had not evolved into the staggering beauty in the New York photographs that Bailey took of her, but in Ms. Gillian is absent the kind of potential Shrimpton already possessed as a leggy young model. The teased bouffant hair, pudgy eyes, and the askew legs did characterize the early Jean, but Gillian misses on every point thanks to woeful styling. To observe Karen Gillian is to see the Dr. Who companion in 60s "clobber" and the wrong eye shadow applications -- sadly, even the teddy bear photographed better. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the show is they used David Bailey's actual photographs from the New York shoot of Jean Shrimpton in the closing credits. That was worth sitting though the program.

This dramatisation of the epochal David Bailey / Jean Shrimpton photo-shoot in New York, January 1962 made for an entertaining if occasionally shallow viewing. Presented very much as a confrontation between rebellious youth and fusty conservatism (in the person of their accompanying chaperon, the tyrannical, but brittle and of course much older Lady Rendlesham), Bailey and Shrimpton are portrayed as the advance guard of the whole Swinging 60's movement, a point rather unsubtly made with its references to the Beatles and Mary Quant just before the end. Whether Bailey's contribution to photography was quite as seismic as the Beatles on music or Quant on fashion is open to debate but as a light, amusing and easy on the eye entertainment, it worked well I thought. Bailey's famous pictures are well recreated, much to the righteous indignation of behind-the-times Rendlesham, and while there's not much more to the piece than their various contretemps, interspersed with Shrimpton's occasional vulnerability, precocity and gaucheness, one has to respect the difficulty in making the fashion world a gripping dramatic undertaking. The acting of the three leads was very good, Aneurin Bernard especially good as the saturnine, Cockney-on-the-make, "don't call me David" Bailey, Helen McCrory equally so as the ever-so posh Lady Rendlesham and if Karen Gillan sometimes seems too old for the 18 that the real Shrimpton was at the time, she comes through in the end as her character develops some maturity and wisdom. I don't have much of an opinion of the fashion world but saw from this how the whole "supermodel" phenomenon of recent times got its start. Whether that was something I desperately needed to know, I'm not sure but the production did satisfy my curiosity in British popular culture in the 60's and was also one of the rare programmes my wife and I could sit and watch together with equal interest and yes, enjoyment