By Robbie Collin.

Move over, American Gigolo. Make room, The Talented Mr Ripley. There’s a new menswear movie in town.

I say new. In fact the film in question has been around for a decade, but despite attracting a sizeable cult following in that time – no less than Quentin Tarantino placed it in his annual top 10 – it’s yet to catch the eye or imagination of the male style community at large. 

And that’s probably because the film is The Intern: a frothy comedy in which Anne Hathaway’s e-fashion startup founder grants a work experience placement to Robert De Niro’s amiable 70-year-old retiree. Directed by Nancy Meyers, of The Holiday and Something’s Gotta Give, it was marketed squarely at a female audience, and little about its marketing campaign screamed “epic men’s fits”.

Yet on the tenth anniversary of its release, the film is worth seeking out: not only because said epic fits are there in abundance, but also because the film is one of the smartest I’ve seen about the way men dress, and why it matters. 

Meyers has always been fascinated by this sort of stuff, but usually it’s her interiors, rather than the costumes, that end up plastered across viewers’ moodboards. As a filmmaker she’s obsessed with the spaces – particularly kitchens – in which her characters nest. 

These spaces are always styled to magazine-spread perfection, but also reflect their stylers’ values, aspirations and desires, as well as the audience’s. (Watch Meryl Streep flirtatiously prepare pains au chocolat with Steve Martin in It’s Complicated and you’ll see what I mean.) Her films delight in materials and craftsmanship. She loves to see a look pulled off.

The kitchen of De Niro’s Brooklyn brownstone in The Intern is a beauty – and that his life is orderly enough for him to have a cold roast chicken at the ready in the fridge for weekday dinners is a nicely revealing (and very Meyersian) detail. But more impressive is his wardrobe. 

De Niro’s character, Ben Whittaker, once worked at the old telephone-book printing plant now occupied by Hathaway’s burgeoning business – and when offered a placement there as part of a community enterprise, it’s all the excuse he needs to get his suits back into rotation. 

And not just any suits – but delectable, classically tailored tropical wool numbers in warm grey and calming navy, typically in what looks like an airy hopsack weave. The cuts are timeless, with unobtrusive notched labels; the fit is structured but never stiff. 

The shirts are crisp cotton with button-down collars – and in one instance, short sleeves. The watch is an understated Omega Seamaster; the ties quietly stylish foulards and repp stripes. 

He carries a sturdy leather attaché case and a handkerchief: the latter because you never know when a female acquaintance may need to dry her eyes. “The reason for carrying a handkerchief is to lend it,” he later explains to a younger colleague. “One of the last vestiges of the chivalrous gent.”

Note, however, that this is folded neatly in an inside pocket: there’s no sprezzatura, no flamboyance. Ben’s outfits radiate dependability and composure – that even goes for his pyjamas, of which we see three pairs over the course of the film. 

In a callback to (of all things) Taxi Driver, Meyers has De Niro stare at himself in the mirror one morning while wearing a fetching blue, white and navy striped set with white piping, and practice his office repartee. “Hi, howdy, what do you need?”, he says: a far cry from “You talkin’ to me?”

This matters because in the millennial workplace – or at least Hathaway’s frantic corner of it – composure and dependability are in short supply. And as the film progresses, all the problems faced by Hathaway’s Jules can be navigated, one way or another, with Ben’s old-school approach. 

The same goes for Ben’s younger, yet more senior, male colleagues. Their unofficial uniform of open work shirts over uncoordinated ringer tees makes them look like the work-experience kids, floundering out of their depth. But the Ben Effect starts to rub off, and when one of them later asks to borrow a tie, it feels like a minor moral triumph.

“Nobody calls men men any more,” Jules points out over post-work tequilas one night, neatly ventriloquising The Intern’s underlying thesis. “Women went from girls to women; men went from men to boys. This is a problem in the big picture.” 

While Jules’s generation of women benefited from the maturing influence of initiatives like Take Your Daughter to Work Day, their male counterparts “still seem to be trying to figure it out,” she goes on. “They’re still dressing like little boys, they’re playing video games. 

“How in one generation have men gone from guys like Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford to…” (Her other male employees glance at one another guiltily here.) “Look and learn, boys,” she concludes, pointing at their older colleague. “Because if you ask me, this is what cool is.”

That’s cool in bearing, but also disposition. Ben’s clothes are an expression of his broader life philosophy: what he does, like what he wears, matters enough to make it worth getting right. Crucially, Meyers doesn’t frame this attitude as one whose time has passed. 

When Ben arrives at the office for the first time, it’s the contemporary period details – Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass wittering away on the stereo; the receptionist directing him to “talent acquisition” – that are played for comic effect.

The Intern’s costume designer was Jacqueline Demeterio, though De Niro’s suits were selected by the actor’s longtime collaborator Aude Bronson-Howard, who has been dressing his characters on and off since the mid-1980s. Perhaps that’s why he looks so comfortable in them – but then, the sheer ease of Ben’s personal style is also Meyers’ rebuke to the modern myth of men’s tailoring as outmoded, formal and stiff. 

Yet The Intern’s importance as a menswear film has little to do with whether or not your taste aligns with Ben’s. Rather, like those widely heralded classics mentioned above, it’s about the codes within clothing – that the things we wear always express certain values, whether we intended them to or not. 

It’s just that for once, those values don’t lead to, say, a dissolute existence seducing rich married women in Los Angeles, or passing oneself off as the shipbuilding heir you recently bludgeoned to death with an oar. It’s not a lesson you’d expect to be taught by Robert De Niro, but you can dress well and also be a thoroughly decent chap.

Robbie is the chief film critic for The Telegraph, a PS reader and a menswear enthusiast. See his previous article on white suits here.