Meet the Liberace of smalltown stylists
AT THE age of 77, with a tremendous body of work behind him, German actor Udo Kier may just have found the role of a lifetime in the melancholic, funny, thoroughly engaging Swan Song (★★★★I, 12A, 105 mins).
He plays Pat Pitsenbarger, a retired gay hairdresser enduring an almost catatonic existence in an old folks’ home. Pat doesn’t have much to live for until an attorney arrives one day to explain that back in the city of Sandusky, Ohio, a former customer of his has died, leaving instructions that he and nobody else must prepare her for the ‘open-casket’ viewing.
She was Rita Parker Sloan, Sandusky’s grande dame, and she is played in a fleeting cameo by Linda Evans — a nice touch for those of us who remember Evans in Dynasty, the TV soap practically synonymous with big hair.
At first Pat declines the task, even though it comes with a fee of $25,000 and he is flat broke. He tended to Rita’s coiffure every Friday afternoon for 33 years but they had a love-hate relationship, and he never forgave her for not attending the funeral of his lover, who died of Aids.
Moreover, he has become a shadow of his former self — but that’s not difficult, for in his heyday he was a flamboyant drag act known as ‘the Liberace of Sandusky’.
Still, when he changes his mind, the mission to prettify Rita for the grave pumps all the old mischief back into him as he wanders through town revisiting familiar haunts.
Kier gives a real bravura performance, a fabulous soundtrack comprises lots of gay icons (Judy Garland, Dusty Springfield, Shirley Bassey) and Todd Stephens’s film becomes even more compelling when you learn that the story is true.
All My Friends Hate Me (★★★II, 15, 93 mins), by contrast, is a slab of fiction with an eyerollingly unoriginal premise — a bunch of old university pals gathering at a grand pile in the English countryside for a birthday celebration. The main character is even called Pete (Tom Stourton, also co-writer) as if deliberately evoking the smug 1992 comedy Peter’s Friends.
The country-house reunion movie, practically a genre in its own right, can be a springboard for comedy, satire, horror, romance or even a psychological thriller. Andrew Gaynord’s film ambitiously tries to combine all these strands, as Pete finds not just that he and his friends don’t seem very compatible any more, but that they actively appear to be tormenting him.
It’s nicely acted and bowls along, and we feel for Pete as his anxiety and sense of alienation mount, but I’d have bought into it more if a couple of the characters hadn’t been such roaring caricatures. However, it’s wittily and energetically done.