Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards

The designer’s own recollections paint the most vivid pictures throughout the film, as do his sketches and the extraordinary parade of shoes that go by like models pivoting on the runway.

At times it is a bit unfocused, following a loosely chronological but otherwise haphazard structure. Yet it’s still a treat to spend time in the company of a true artist, never before illuminated with such clarity.

An affectionate and sometimes vibrantly imaginative biographical sketch, Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards could have used more shoes and fewer people.

Manolo might be a hard sell to moviegoers who aren’t already interested, but for fashion enthusiasts, it’s an enjoyable confection.

In a scene puzzlingly late in the film, Mr. Blahnik, who apparently still makes samples by hand, walks through his factory and finesses a sensuous heel out of a stump of wood. More of that would have made this confection about a radiant man into something sturdier.

Perhaps die-hard fashionistas would find this reasonably diverting, but to everyone else, it is guaranteed to grow tiresome very quickly.

Michael Roberts's documentary is an unabashed exercise in deifying its subject matter with superlatives and hyperbole from the mouths of talking heads, which ultimately results in the cheapening of the artist.