‘Brunello: The Gracious Visionary’ Review: A Seductive Hagiography

As a design house, Brunello Cucinelli is a name synonymous with luxury and quality. As a production company, it’s hard to know how to feel about it preceding a biographical film about its namesake. “Brunello: The Gracious Visionary” tells the story of the fashion luminary from his humble beginnings in rural Perugia, Italy to the heights of his success as an international tastemaker and proponent of what he calls “humanistic capitalism.”

Described by veteran Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”) as “neither a documentary, nor a feature film, nor a commercial,” it qualifies best as hagiography. But with as skilled a filmmaker at the helm as Cucinelli is a designer and entrepreneur, one may not mind being swept along by its rhapsodic portrait, even if you quickly become convinced that “The Gracious Visionary” is too generous to be fully honest about its subject.

Born in 1956, Cucinelli grew up on a farm where he learned important lessons from rustic living; daily meals around the family table cultivated an appreciation for the wisdom (and company) of his elders, while the responsibilities of making straight furrows while plowing the family fields taught him the value of beauty. Tornatore enlists Cucinelli to narrate his childhood, then recreates it in vivid detail so the designer can literally walk back through his own memories. It’s the sort of nostalgia at which the filmmaker excels, and you can practically feel the earthy heat, emanating from the downstairs cowshed, that kept the young boy and his relatives warm during the winter.

By the time Tornatore depicts Brunello running carefree through fields of gold and red flowers, dragging a handmade kite behind him, it’s clear he’s aiming for something more beatific than a simple history lesson. Recalling the biblical knights that danced and fought in Cucinelli’s childhood dreams, the director projects crayon drawings on the rafters above the bed his fictional counterpart (Francesco Cannevale) shares with his cousins. In interview segments, the designer’s genteel delivery makes it sound like he’s confiding in you, even though he’s clearly told these stories over and over. (In fact, his wife Federica says exactly that, as do daughters Camilla and Carolina, and any number of employees and colleagues.)

What’s surprising about Tornatore’s approach is how unhurried he is in getting to the details that people familiar with the brand are likely most interested in. The film takes more than an hour to get to Cucinelli’s first inklings as a business owner, much less conceiving the vivid garments that his admirers argue “invented color cashmere.” (Amusingly, a relative observes that well into his twenties, he lived “a life of leisure.” Cucinelli counters: “I didn’t see it as doing nothing, I saw it as enriching my soul.” Slackers, make sure to put that one in your back pocket next time someone asks about your future.)

Even then, Tornatore bounces between pivotal inspirations — a hated pair of green corduroy pants given as a teen, a beloved caramel coat that later formed the cornerstone of his menswear line — and the familial interactions that shaped his professional philosophies, such as witnessing his father’s despair after obtaining a manufacturing job that left him feeling dehumanized. Framed by the designer’s skill as a card player (oh yeah, his first way of making money as a teen was as a card sharp), Cucinelli’s scrappy ambition catapulted him to success through a series of calculated risks which everyone from Oprah to spiritual leaders recount in hushed, amazed tones.

Yet amidst the designer’s humanistic attitudes and slavish devotion to beauty, the questions are never asked why the price point of his clothes is prohibitive to everyone but the most affluent customers, or if the workers he seems to treat so well are paid well enough to afford them. But his taste is peerless; his business instincts unparalleled; his care for other people, for history and for the earth itself irrefutably compassionate. In 2021, after refusing to lay off workers or cut salaries during the Covid pandemic, he spoke alongside the then Prince Charles at the G20 summit to present his principles of humanistic capitalism and human sustainability. Guided by the philosophies of Pythagoras and Aristotle, he maintains a belief in work and life both championing the “moral and economic dignity of the human being.” That means turning “his company into a big family,” where the lights go out in his factory workrooms at the same time each day so everyone can eat homemade rigatoni together.

It’s a sumptuously mounted effort, a romantic story of ambition and vision. Nicola Piovani’s score evokes a whimsical longing for every era of the designer’s life, as if the audience cheerfully lived it along with him. It’s possible, even likely, that he is as unambiguously wonderful in thought and deed as Tornatore and his army of co-conspirators claim. And in an era of unscrupulous capitalism, it’s a welcome fantasy to hear the story of a billionaire with compassion. But whether or not interview access was at all controlled by the film’s namesake production company, the experts and fans (among them Patrick Dempsey) are all sourced from a rarified social and financial strata that fails to even gesture towards a sense of completeness, much less objectivity.

Concluding the film with an extremely long tracking shot of a table where Cucinelli sits at the head, Tornatore suggests that the designer accomplished his goal of turning his company into a family, everyone together enjoying the fruits of his success in an Italian landscape that defines “picturesque.” Like virtually every other goal outlined before that one, “Brunello: The Gracious Visionary” once again validates his worldview and supplies emotional gratification to the audience. (This kind of business practice is the way it should be, dammit!) But does it deliver truth? It feels like Tornatore has created the cinematic equivalent of one of Cucinelli’s garments: a film that’s covetable and frequently exquisite, but unless you belong to a certain echelon, its true value feels either unreal or completely unattainable.