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Vivienne Westwood is a woman of contradictions. She’s the OG punk rocker who dressed the Sex Pistols (not that the movie covers that – “I can’t be bothered,” Westwood complains. “It’s all so boring!”) who received an OBE and a DBE; the anti-establishment environmentalist who has decried “the drug of consumerism” while running a fashion company with questionable sustainability practises. Not that you’d know it from Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist.

In interviews, Westwood has stated that she’d believed the film to be focused around her activism. I went in to the movie hoping for a look at Westwood’s heydey, her contradictions and the chaotic-creative world that her star began to rise in. While being relatively entertaining, in part due to the irrepressible spirit of Westwood and current husband and creative partner Andreas Kronthaler, the film fails at both of these objectives. Director Lorna Tucker has married new interview footage with archival shots from Westwood’s career, ostensibly to highlight her subject’s cultural significance – and I suppose it mostly succeeds at that.

Westwood seems to have been a difficult subject to document, from her reluctance to talk about issues pertinent to the film (her productive but turbulent relationship with Malcolm McLaren is briefly narrated by their son Joseph Corré) to the sheer scope of her career. If Westwood had wanted a greater emphasis to be placed on her activism, I would have liked to see her pressed on the issues of unsustainability in the fashion world – the use of PVC/polyester in her brand, the waste that comes from nine collections a year (her fashion house’s current output, where most designers put out two) and the company’s use of unpaid interns.

The Westwood brand has issued a Twitter statement stating that the film “has been made and produced by a third party and as it stands isn’t endorsed by Vivienne Westwood… It’s a shame because the film is mediocre and Vivienne and Andreas are not.”

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist fails to highlight two out of three descriptors (‘punk’ by my reckoning, and ‘activist’ by Vivienne’s) and by doing so fails to do justice to the third. If I’d watched this on Netflix with a glass of wine, I would have been relatively entertained and possibly more inclined to be generous, but going to the cinema to see a Sundance selection should have been more satisfying.

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is currently playing at the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield.