Like the fashion industry it satires, Sally Potter’s Rage looks great on the outside, but has a hollow centre.

Set behind-the-scenes at a New York fashion show, a schoolboy named Michaelangelo, who we never see or hear, interviews the people who make it all happen. Each interviewee spills their guts while Michaelangelo films them on his mobile phone.

Remarkably the rookie journalist, purportedly writing a school project, is greeted with the generosity of time and spirit unlikely even Anna Wintour could garner. He not only gains access to lowly behind the scenes workers such as Hispanic seamstress (Adriana Barraza) and pizza delivery boy (Riz Ahmed), but the most precious of the precious. Two of the models in Jude Law’s Minx and Lily Cole’s Lettuce Leaf, Eddie Izzard’s money man Tiny Diamonds and even the omnipotent designer Merlin (Simon Abkarian) sacrifices some of his near celestial time to explain that his collection “makes sense of the chaos of the world”. Wow!

While the top echelons of the fashion world spout the sort of trite shite fashion royalty has peddled for decades, Judi Dench’s critic says it how it is declaring fashion to be pornography created by desperate and deluded designers.

But Potter shifts the ‘action’ into a murder mystery when, during the course of the confessionals, two models die. As Rage morphs into a whodunit, David Oyelowo’s detective, who doesn’t have the excuse of being a self-indulgent fashionista, enters finding enough time during his investigation to quote Shakespeare while being interviewed by Michaelangelo.

They use Michaelangelo as their silent shrink and all complain that he’s put his videoblog on the internet, and the subsequent intrusion of privacy – then go back to tell him more. Potter seems not only to be making a negative statement about the fashion industry, but also the evils of video blogging and reality streaming. Shame she picked such shallow subjects because we simply don’t care if they pay the price for our instant fame obsessed culture.

Potter’s conclusion is that the fashion industry is shallow, superficial and exploitative, hardly a front-page scoop for Women’s Wear Daily. There’s nothing here that hasn’t already been said more humorously during an episode of Absolutely Fabulous or more piquantly in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter.

And to think that all this drivel comes from the woman who made Orlando, the legacy of which can be the only reason such a to-die-for cast agreed to appear.

Rage is saved somewhat by its performances though. Jude Law’s vainglorious Minx is quite hilarious. Apart from listening to him slipping in and out of an Eastern European accent rolling his R’s deliciously when he plays his alter-ego Minx, it’s hard to tell whether he’s playing a man in drag or a female model. Either way, pretty boy Law makes for an extremely attractive girl. Izzard wears natty three-piece suits and Steve Buscemi’s war photographer turned misguided fashion snapper is suitably hangdog.

Shot by Potter against bluescreen, which changes colour for each interview, ironically for a film so obviously criticising the fashion world one of the best performances comes from one of its own, Lily Cole.

The novelty of seeing Law dressed as a woman and Dench smoking a joint soon wears off.

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Rage [2009]
Studio: Spirit Entertainment
Released: 28 September 2009 
ASIN: B002L7O82Q

Buy Rage online now and make your own mind up about Jude Law in full drag!

Rage is the world's first feature film to debut on mobile phones. It can be seen from 21 September at www.babelgum.com/rage. Find out more at www.ragethemovie.com.