REVIEW???

I n the new gay drama Any Day Now, Rudy Donatello (Alan Cumming) works as a drag queen by night but still finds it tough making ends meet. Then out of the blue Paul Fliger (Garret Dillahunt) walks into the bar and into his life.

Donatello, played sympathetically and with gusto by Alan Cumming, sings at a gay nightclub in 1979’s West Hollywood with two other drag queens as his back-up singers. On the night that Fliger walks into the bar he is immediately smitten with Donatello. Why? It’s not clear. Perhaps it is love first sight?

Meanwhile, Donatello’s next door neighbour, Marianna (Jamie Anne Allman), is a drug dealer and sex addict whose young son Marco has Down’s syndrome. One night she gets arrested, leaving her son alone in the apartment. Donatello discovers the boy alone, so he arranges for the boy to come to stay with him temporarily until the situation with his mother becomes clearer. At the same time the relationship with Fliger is getting more and more serious, with both men quickly falling in love with each other.

Social services end up getting involved and they put Marco into a foster home, making Donatello realise that he and Fliger are fit to take care of the boy, especially after Fliger asks Donatello to move in with him, thereby providing a stable home for Marco.

However, social services think otherwise and dig out every dirty detail they can find about Donatello and Fliger’s relationship to make them look like unfit parents, gay being just one of the details.

When the mother is suddenly sprung from jail in a plea bargain with the district attorney, and all the counts against her are dropped, all hope seems to be lost in keeping Marco.

Cumming gives one of his finest performances in years as the drag queen by night who at first seems lost in life but finally finds happiness and a family at the same time. Garret Dillahunt, an American actor previously seen in Killing Them Softly and Winter’s Bone, is also very good as a closeted lawyer who very slowly comes out after finding love with a man for the first time, building his confidence.

Even more of a revelation is Isaac Leyva as Marco. An actor with Down’s syndrome, his performance is so touching, so emotional, so professional that acting seems to be natural for him. The script, by director Travis Fine and George Arthur Bloom, is very timely and believable, while Fine’s direction is sharp and crisp. Any Day Now is a touching, moving and sympathetic film on the trouble that gay couples have in adopting children Any Day Now is in cinemas now and will be released in DVD in January 2014.