You needn&rsquo;t care about high fashion to get into &ldquo;Valentino: The Last Emperor,&rdquo; an engaging documentary about the 40-year reign of Valentino Garavani.</p><p>At 77, Valentino, who has dressed Jackie Kennedy and scores more of the world&rsquo;s most glamorous women, is in many ways an incomplete person. He&rsquo;s such a total aesthete that day-to-day reality holds little interest for him.</p><p> But give him a naked woman and a bolt of cloth, and he&rsquo;ll create something spectacular.</p><p>&ldquo;I am a disaster in everything else,&rdquo; the perfectly tanned designer admits in one of his rare moments of candid revelation.</p><p>In fact, the film by Matt Tyrnauer, a Vanity Fair correspondent, views Valentino almost exclusively through the eyes of his longtime lover, Giancarlo Giammetti, who also serves as the CEO of Valentino&rsquo;s corporation. </p><p>Early in the film a pushy TV journalist sticks a microphone in Giammetti&rsquo;s face and asks what it&rsquo;s like to live in the shadow of a great man. If the question hurts, Giammetti doesn&rsquo;t let it show. </p><p>Later, though, he says that being a friend, lover and employee of Valentino requires patience.</p><p>Valentino can be petulant and imperious, pushy and mercurial. Despite decades of triumphs, he&rsquo;s still tormented by insecurities and often second-guesses his artistic decisions.</p><p>He must be coached on even basic social interactions (&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget &hellip; your secretary&rsquo;s son just graduated from college &hellip;&rdquo;).</p><p>Meanwhile Giammetti runs the business. He&rsquo;s part personal assistant, part hard-hitting mogul who must deftly navigate the financial shark tank with the corporate players who are now majority owners of the Valentino brand.</p><p>He does it out of love, both for Valentino and for the business they have created together.</p><p>&ldquo;Valentino&rdquo; follows this pair over a year in which they prepare a huge retrospective of Valentino&rsquo;s work to be mounted in the shadow of Rome&rsquo;s Coliseum.</p><p>Valentino frets and whines. The preternaturally calm Giammetti offers reassurances and doggedly keeps pushing the project forward. Occasionally he&rsquo;ll give a &ldquo;what-are-you-gonna-do?&rdquo; shrug to the camera.</p><p>Frequently this doc plays like a real-life Fellini movie, filled with beautiful people and bizarre incidents.</p><p>And ultimately it&rsquo;s an unexpectedly touching love story.</p><p>(The film opens today at the Tivoli and AMC Studio 30.)</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">&lsquo;VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR&rsquo; &#x2605;&#x2605;&#x2605; 1/2 </span></strong><br /> <strong>Director: </strong>Matt Tyrnauer </p><p><strong>Cast: </strong>Valentino Garavani, Giancarlo Giammetti </p><p><strong>Rated: </strong><strong>PG-13</strong> for some nudity and language; some dialogue in French and Italian with subtitles</p><p><strong>Running time:</strong> 1:36</p><p></div>