White Diamond, a supposedly revealing documentary about Kylie's return to form following successful treatment for breast cancer, is part adoring homage, part meandering DVD extra. It never really succeeds in telling us anything about Kylie we didn't already know, but it's clear that Ms. Minogue definitely likes it that way.
Originally designed as, in fact, a tour DVD extra, the heaps of footage collected by Kylie's best friend and "gay husband" William Baker were eventually made into a feature length documentary. As a piece of filmmaking it's pretty bloated - lingering, worshipful, slo-mo shots and a lot of dancers in their underwear - but with some judicious editing could have been an engaging featurette about life backstage.
Instead this rather long and meandering documentary is sweet, but not particularly revealing, nor intimate.
There were parts when I found my eyelids flickering shut involuntarily. The one truly positive thing I took from it was a lasting respect for a woman who clearly works extremely hard to make her shows value for money and a flawless spectacle. In the context of recovering from cancer this can be fairly moving, but it still tells me nothing more about Kylie the woman.
The times when Kylie was rendered almost incapable of speech by sheer exhaustion were, paradoxically, the most revealing. These were the moments when her perfect veneer slipped and when she managed to spit some words out she could do so without giving the appearance of considering and screening every word carefully. Generally, in the more planned interviews that reflect on the footage some time later, she takes on a wall-eyed expression as she seems to scan every sentence for the possibility that it can be misquoted. Likewise, in moments of boredom when nothing in particular was going on, were flashes of peevishness, a childlike and exuberant sense of humour and a crack in her icy self-possession.
The rest, however, was frankly dull. A tour is not as fascinating to the people on it as it is to everyone else, and the key to making an interesting tour documentary is to filter out the mindless chat; this is something Baker fails to do. In fact, at times the documentary seems more about him. When Kylie invites little sister Dannii onstage with her to perform Kids, I thought I'd finally see something interesting. Dannii, promisingly, speaks about how Kylie worried the family by returning to work so early, and I thought some tidbits about the way the dynamic works between the two famous sisters - especially as one eclipses the other so - would be forthcoming. Not so. Instead we have Baker weeping over how moved he was by the performance with Kylie absently comforting him. During his snivelling moment (he cries a lot in tiresome camp stereotype style), he mutters something about how the sisters are closer now than they've ever been. Not a word of explanation or examination is given beyond that. Is it tabloid of me to expect an "intimate portrait" to offer some tantalising hint of detail about someone's private life?
White Diamond suffered from a lack of objective thanks to its original purpose and, of course, a serious lack of impartiality. But as Kylie says, eyes glittering and mouth set, right at the beginning, she only agreed to do it because it was Baker at the helm. She's probably the global star about which we know the least. Is this because she's so fiercely private that she keeps it all under wraps, or is it because - as a moment playing with silly pictures on Photo Booth that she keeps trying to hide from the camera shows - there's actually very little to reveal? Could it be that Kylie is, after all, not all that interesting? I can't help feeling that's a part of it.
A preview of the documentary with a short clip as Kylie returns to rehearsals:
