In The First Monday in May, a new film about New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, we watch a coterie of celebrities �" boy pop-singer Justin Bieber, Cher, actor George Clooney (in tux, sans tie) and hundreds more �" strut, imbibe and mingle, all to raise a heap of cash for a great institution. At night's end the Met's coffers are $1.2 million richer, and the museum is poised to open its doors so that 800,000 patrons can see the fashion exhibit China: Through the Looking Glass . Funds raised provide the operating budget for the Met's costume department nestled in the basement, which normally flies under the radar for even the city's most informed fashionistas.
At such a tony event, populated by a crowd so upscale that the only personage missing is the Queen of England, you wouldn't think there'd be much to fuss about. But even the evening's hostess, Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief for American Vogue magazine, wonders aloud whether the museum is lowering its standards for the sake of commerce. "Fashion can create a dream, fashion can create a fantasy, but there might be a question whether fashion belongs in a museum like the Met."
Wintour, with her pageboy haircut and penchant for wearing sunglasses indoors, has a no-nonsense executive manner that brooks no fools. Daughter of an English newspaper baron, Wintour is so famously bossy that she's believed to be the model for Meryl Streep's caustic fashion editor in the 2006 satirical film The Devil Wears Prada. Checking the guest list for the opening-night bash, Wintour notices the name of an annoying young celeb. "Do you think he can be pried away from his cellphone for the evening?" Wintour barks to an assistant, who meekly replies, "I hear you loud and clear!"
Director Andrew Rossi enjoys poking his camera around the corners of august institutions. His 2011 film Page One gave readers of The New York Times an insider's peek at how "the Grey Lady" is put together, from editorial meetings to the everyday routines of the paper's elderly photographer Bill Cunningham, who at 80+ years still tools around Manhattan on a one-speed Schwinn. Cunningham makes a brief cameo at the end of First Monday, soaking in culture for his photos.
The film's other leading character is the aging but still boyish Met Costume Department curator Andrew Bolton, who oversees the largest collection of fashion garments in the world. He sighs, "Fashion is still considered by most people as in the female domain. I think that's why many people still dismiss fashion as art."
With its behind-the-scenes, all-access-pass peek at today's uneasy alliances of old money and pretty faces, First Monday allows us to imagine that we're temporarily part of one of the world's most privileged minorities. But Rossi should have figured out a way to get some of the industry's hot-button topics, animal rights and the underrepresentation of racial minorities in the business, into the film's otherwise engaging dialogues.