Cleopatra Entertainment: Twiggy (2024) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Cleopatra Entertainment

Sadie Frost initially emerged into the film world as an English actress who gained prominence in the 1990s including but not limited to The Krays and Francis Ford Coppola’s film of Bram Stoker’s Dracula before meeting her husband Jude Law on the set of Paul W.S. Anderson’s Shopping.  Steadily acting throughout the 2000s up until the present, she and Jude Law formed the production company Natural Nylon which didn’t really go anywhere before funding the fashion label Frost French.  Around 2004 and 2006, she had a brief television series entitled What Sadie did next… as well as opening up about her eating disorders on the show Eating with…Sadie Frost.  

Then at two different points she was a member of the British Independent Film Awards jury between 1999 and 2002.  Throughout her career in film media, she served as a producer on somewhere around fifteen projects including Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  It is important to open this review regarding the checkered multifaceted and enormously talented jack-of-all-trades life story of its producer-director Sadie Frost as it so closely echoes the life of her film’s very own subject Twiggy.

 
In the documentary film about the life of British model, actress, singer and cultural icon of mod-sixties Dame Lesley Lawson otherwise known as Twiggy, this colorful and enlightening saga and testament to feminine drive for succeeding across many talents comes from an angle of someone who has been down the same road and knows the terrain.  Though Sadie Frost may not have achieved quite the degree of notoriety as Twiggy has, both have had their fair share of ups and downs in their respective career paths as women working within a male dominated media film industry.  

Without having met each other their stories absolutely echo one another’s and in Twiggy, which initially starts off about the outsiders’ points of view regarding her legacy before letting the icon tell her story in her own words, Frost and Twiggy are no doubt kindred spirits which made approaching the subject with her camera and the subject comfortably opening up to the documentary filmmaker much easier for all involved.  As a result, you couldn’t get a more down-to-Earth portrait of Sixties London’s ‘It Girl’ largely told from her own lips alongside friends and family.

 
Comprised of still-photographs, televised and filmed interviews including but not limited to guest appearances from Brooke Shields, Dustin Hoffman, Paul McCartney, Sienna Miller and more, the film tracks the icon’s meteoric rise to superstardom as a fashion model noted for her thin figure, cockney accent and initially androgynous look to her gradual foray into film, theater and television acting.  

Most notably, for awhile, the film spends some time talking about her mentor (and my third favorite filmmaker of all time) Ken Russell who was good friends with her, featured her in a bit part in The Devils before effectively gifting the actress her first real starring role with the Golden Globe winning musical The Boyfriend.  Not long after, she crossed over into Broadway in the musical My One and Only which garnered her a Tony nomination.  Then she got into a music and singing career at one point, all of which were successful before returning to modeling once again.  Alive and well, she recounts painful memories involving her first husband Michael Witney before meeting the present love of her life Leigh Lawson. 

 
Over the film, we invariably bear witness to more than a few instances of chauvinism if not outright misogyny in the industry including footage of a condescending interview conducted by none other than Woody Allen.  At only 16 years old, she’s asked questions about world philosophers and social change, typical dressing down.  But at the same time, the quick witted and sharp Twiggy fires back in a way that all but triumphantly takes the spotlight from Woody and turns the humiliation on himself. 

Not to mention her own struggles in ascending the ranks of the female fashion modeling and style industry surrounded by men who didn’t always have her best interests at heart.  Then there’s a bizarre story about disgraced producer and mixer Phil Spector who reportedly invited Twiggy and her husband over to talk about collaborating on an album only for Spector to allegedly draw a gun and chase them out of his mansion.  For as outlandish as this sounds, given his own murder conviction decades later, I firmly believe it to be true.

 
As likable of a documentary film as the subject herself, Twiggy which opens and closes with a heavenly cover of Be My Baby by The Ronettes is radiant and like a beam of sunlight.  Inspiring and uplifting in the face of uphill personal battles at home or in the public eye, Sadie Frost finds in her subject and character Twiggy a kindred spirit who has done it all and still lives to tell the tale.  The kind of film that really warms up to the subject so closely she becomes one of our relatives or friends by the end of it, Twiggy released in 2024 comes to DVD physical media for the first time via Cleopatra Entertainment in a new special-edition release.  

Featuring a collectible slipcover, the disc comes with an introduction co-hosted by Twiggy and Sadie Frost as well as additional interviews and more.  Though a Blu-ray disc would’ve been nice, this is a wonderful little documentary that lets Twiggy tell not just her own story but one lived out by many women making it in the entertainment or fashion industry.  The journey there had its difficulties and challenges for both subject and documentary storyteller but I have a hunch Twiggy and Sadie Frost have mutually enriched their lives in meeting and working with each other.

--Andrew Kotwicki