That Click

Hagiographic documentaries about photographers have become their own genre over the past couple of decades, with the likes of Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon, Jim Marshall, David Bailey, Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton all immortalised on film. That Click is a celebration of Ontario's Douglas Kirkland, born in 1934, who is famed for two 1961 sessions: an intimate between-the-sheets study of Marilyn Monroe, and a portrait of Judy Garland that captured a single tear running down her cheek. Stars including Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone and Elle Fanning line up to praise Kirkland's technique, but he comes across as exhausting company at work, gabbling orgasmically, "Wow, wow, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" - and often grandly referring to himself in the third person: "Marilyn was my most significant shoot - she formed who Douglas Kirkland is." Luca Severi's besotted film improves when it covers Kirkland's early years: sent in 1975 by New York Times magazine to a decimated Detroit, Kirkland photographed a family in dire straits and produced a profound truth. Ultimately, however, the only truth that seems to emerge from That Click is that there's always room for another documentary about a photographer.