Vidal Sassoon The Movie

Yes, it’s a feature doc about a hairdresser. And you can wipe that supercilious smirk off your face right now. This is Vidal Sassoon, truly a great Londoner. Put in care because his mum was too poor to look after him, he fought Mosley’s fascists in the East End and worked himself up from floor-sweeper to change the face of his chosen métier. An autodidact, Sassoon shaped hair with the asymmetric lines of modern architecture, and his ‘five-point cut’ proved a genuine work of art. But this lovingly made portrait loses momentum when Sassoon becomes a brand rather than an innovator. This lively octogenarian deserves the attention, but the film flits from enlightening to infomercial.