At 92 years old, Hollywood movie star Kim Novak – legendary of course for her doppelganger starring role in Hitchcock’s Vertigo – is a vivid and, in fact, yearningly romantic and demanding presence in this gallant, cinephile documentary-interview filmed by director and Novak superfan Alexandre O Philippe. She is one of the very few golden age stars still with us, and maybe the title of this film is a playful pun: at the very apex of Hollywood history, perhaps Novak feels dizzy looking down from her mythic height.
Philippe himself is more than qualified for this kind of intensely personal exegesis, having in the past made intriguing films about David Lynch’s debt to The Wizard of Oz and about the Psycho shower scene. With a touch of mischief and misdirection, he begins his film by simply playing a voice note that Novak has sent him, in which she talks sombrely about her health issues and about how much time she has left. She does sound poignantly frail. Then you see her in person and she is sensational; articulate, vibrant, youthful in ways that have nothing to do with cosmetic work, very engaged with the questions that Philippe puts to her – but concerned also to discuss her own life and personality, particularly her interest in painting and what she owes to her parents. And, of course, she has something to say about the most germane issue of all: how Hollywood, and society in general, imposes its male views on how a woman should look and behave, a trope famously embodied by Novak in Vertigo.
