2009 (R.J. Cutler) PG, 80 min
Starring: Documentary

If you expect to learn much about Vogue editor Anna Wintour in The September Issue, you’ll be disappointed. The documentary focuses on the production, in 2007, of the fashion magazine’s giant, 840-page September issue. It reveals the same world as The Devil Wears Prada, the 2006 film based on a novel by a former assistant to Wintour, in which Meryl Streep portrays a fashion editor who has made her own Faustian pact to gain fame, power, fortune and great clothes. No question, Wintour wants to rehabilitate her reputation, which explains the filmmaker’s access, but she remains inscrutable. She rarely speaks, wears large sunglasses, and hides behind the helmet bob she’s worn for 40 years. The movie’s interest comes from other Vogue personalities, including Grace Coddington, a red-headed former model from Wales, now in her late 60s, whose richly creative imagination masterminds many of the magazine’s most intriguing photo spreads. To her exasperation, they often fall victim to Wintour’s editorial knife.