'Bill Cunningham New York'

Bill Cunningham would never photograph himself -- heaven forbid, with his shlumpy attire and bicycle. What Cunningham wants -- and what he'll bowl over pedestrians and cut off taxis to get at -- is the cutting edge, the cute, the au courant, the fashions that make New York New York and with which he fills two columns a week in the pages of the New York Times Style section. Two dozen women in yellow raincoats. Men in spiked heels. Whatever. Cunningham is the chronicler of Manhattan as epicenter of fashion. He's also a great character.

And as documentary aficionados might be reluctant to admit, great docs require great characters, as much as any mall movie. In director Richard Press' portrait of the artist as an octogenarian, Cunningham is all about his art. He seems to have very little life -- that he'll talk about, at least -- and even as he stalks the runways of Paris and the sidewalks of New York, he lets out far less than his own camera takes in.

He is, however, the kind of New York institution that, in its very eccentricity, defines the city: He lives in an apartment at Carnegie Hall (where he is being threatened with eviction), he guards his privacy, while making a living invading others'; his pace is a sprint, his time is an ever-expiring Now.

Press has made a mischievous, playful movie about an unusual man; it occasionally feels like an advertisement, at least when the Times font is used for the movie's caption. But by not intruding, Press finally gets Cunningham to open up and one realizes that the man's life is not limited. It's just being lived through a lens.