Cinema Paradiso.(the documentary 'Valentino: The Last Emperor')

Byline: ANDRA LEON TALLEY

"I don't think Valentino was in any way ambivalent about wanting to retire," says first-time film director Matt Tyrnauer, who spent two-and-a-half years embedded in the luxe, rara avis world of the Italian couturier and fashion designer for Valentino: The Last Emperor, premiering March 18 at New York's Film Forum and opening nationally March 27. The documentary culminates with the designer's three-day farewell celebration, which included a retrospective exhibition and his penultimate couture show in July 2007 in Rome, where Karl Lagerfeld and Diane von Furstenberg sat front row with Jacqueline de Ribes , who had hired Valentino as a young man in Paris to moonlight as her ghost designer for her boutique collection.

I've known Valentino Garavani since my early days in New York working for Andy Warhol . He and Giancarlo Giammetti have always embraced me as a true friend and objective critic of Valentino's creative brilliance. As Tyrnauer told me, "His crazy passion as a designer is hard to sustain in the world today." His exhibit was mounted at the Ara Pacis Museum, site of Emperor Augustus' Altar of Peace, so the documentarian (whose day job is special correspondent for Vanity Fair and literary executor to Gore Vidal ) decided the movie's title was a perfect fit.

The collaboration of filmmaker and couturier presented a learning curve for Tyrnauer, but he knew this was a narrative that had to be fused with wit and self-deprecating humor. Near the end, not to be missed, is a car ride in Rome. The pair has had a tough day of financial negotiations. Valentino turns to Giancarlo and asks, "How was I?"

G: "Great."

V: "Tell me the truth."

G: "OK, I'll tell you. You're a bit too tan."