Sadie Frost’s delightful documentary “Twiggy” is an affectionate, stylish trip back to the 1960s when a working class London teenager named Lesley Lawson became Twiggy (and one of the most recognizable people on the planet). Frost doesn’t just revisit the fashion icon’s meteoric rise, but she makes a convincing case that Twiggy’s influence extends far beyond mod miniskirts, false eyelashes and the Swinging Sixties.
The first half of the film is also its strongest, as Frost fills her documentary with gorgeous archival footage, newsreels and beautifully curated fashion photographs that capture the energy of the era. Watching Twiggy go from an ordinary teenager to a global “it” girl almost overnight feels like stepping into a time capsule. The film also does a nice job of putting her rise into context. At a time when models were expected to be polished, glamorous and often upper class, Twiggy was young, working class, thin, boyish and, most notably, she smiled. Her enormous laugh and unmistakable personality made her feel less like some untouchable fashion fantasy and more like someone teenage girls could actually relate to.
Frost also benefits from an impressive collection of interview subjects, including Paul McCartney, Dustin Hoffman and Brooke Shields. But the most compelling person on screen is Twiggy herself. There’s something genuinely refreshing about seeing someone who became internationally famous as a teenager remain so grounded. Despite being thrust into an industry that is known to be highly critical, exploitative, and predatory, she comes across as kind, funny, hardworking and remarkably normal.
You can see Frost’s affection for her subject, and she’s sometimes a little too comfortable celebrating Twiggy while avoiding anything darker about her story. The film acknowledges the sexism and objectification surrounding the fashion industry, particularly the way teenage girls were commodified, but it never digs very deeply into those unpleasant issues. That’s a missed opportunity, especially given how young Twiggy was when she became a global sensation. There’s a fascinating, potentially disturbing story underneath all the glamour about what it meant for a teenager to be transformed into a product, and the documentary mostly leaves that territory unexplored.
The structure is fairly conventional, too. After such a vibrant first half, the later sections move through Twiggy’s subsequent career and reinventions rather quickly. It feels as though the film has more ground to cover than time to explore it, and some of the later chapters could have used more breathing room.
Still, it’s hard to resist the sheer charm of “Twiggy.” The breezy pacing, fantastic archival material and feel good tone suit its subject perfectly. Twiggy may have helped define an entire generation’s idea of beauty, but what makes her story interesting all these decades later is that the fame never seems to have changed who she was.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 