AUDREY is director Helen Coan's biographical documentary of award-winning actress, style icon, and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn, one of Hollywood's most legendary leading ladies. The film features interviews with Hepburn's family members, including her oldest son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, and granddaughter Emma Hepburn Ferrer, as well as filmmakers, co-stars, and critics like Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Dreyfuss, and the late Molly Haskell.
Coan also talks to personal friends and household staff from Hepburn's years living in Europe toward the end of her life. Audiences will learn about Hepburn's European childhood before and during WWII (although both of her parents were fascist sympathizers, she still suffered during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands), and the move to London that lead to her early roles. The interviewees and footage highlight all of her personal milestones, most of her biggest movies, and her legacy in movie history.
This sweet, informative chronicle of a true Hollywood legend highlights the many ways in which Hepburn's legacy lives on in Hollywood and popular culture. The film's structure is somewhat unoriginal -- it's told in straight chronological order, from Hepburn's birth in Belgium and the hard years of World War II to her time as Hollywood's "It Girl" and beyon, up to her death at age 63 in Switzerland. The film concentrates on some of Hepburn's biggest roles and movies -- Roman Holiday, Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany's, My Fair Lady, Sabrina -- but by no means all of them (there's no mention of Charade, the controversial Children's Hour, or Two for the Road).
Hepburn's marriages get a lot of screen time, particularly her first union to fellow actor Mel Ferrer. There's also an interesting segment about Hepburn's relationship with Hubert Givenchy, with whom she had a close personal friendship. Their collaboration led to some of the most famous looks in 1950s and '60s Hollywood -- most iconically, the pink-caped dress in Funny Face and the "little black dress" she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Because Audrey's biggest contributor is Hepburn's oldest son, Sean, and he has only positive, beautiful things to say about his mother (as does pretty much every subject), the film almost feels more like a 90-minute tribute than a documentary. But that's OK, because Hepburn really is a fascinating subject -- a huge movie star who gave up the Hollywood life early to dedicate herself to family and philanthropy.
If this were a normal festive season when it was possible to have a post-prandial snuggle on the couch with older relatives, or just fans of the best in old-school movie-star glamour, then this documentary about Audrey Hepburn — out Dec. 15 on DVD and Blu-Ray ahead of a Jan. 5 VOD/digital release — would be ideal viewing. Even if you watch it alone on a laptop with a bottle of cheap beer and a dried-up turkey sandwich, Audrey is a pleasure. That’s mostly due to the still-incandescent star power of its subject.
Even so, this is a fundamentally well-curated packaging of archive and original material, punctuated with insightful interviews with friends, family members and appreciative collaborators and admirers such as Peter Bogdanovich (who directed her in 1981’s They All Laughed, her penultimate film role) and critic Molly Haskell. Nevertheless, viewers with a taste for tell-all bitchiness should prepare to be disappointed.
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