BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

The central character in Steven Soderbergh's excellent new movie "Behind the Candelabra" isn't really Liberace at all but Scott Thorson which, I suppose, is as it should be since the film is based on Thorson's book about the years he spent as an 'employee' and, more significantly, as a lover of the closeted gay star. How accurate it all is we can only surmise since everything is seen through Thorson's eyes. If it had been up to Liberace he would have carried his 'open secret' to the grave. After dying of an AIDS related illness his family still tried to pass his death off as simple heart-failure. Thorson's book, and now Soderbergh's movie, have blown his cover once-and-for-all.

This isn't a conventional biopic by any means. As I said, it's less about Liberace and more about Thorson, in which role Matt Damon gives a career-best performance, as indeed does Michael Douglas as Liberace. Since the film has already, or is about to, screen on American television it means it's ineligible for next year's Oscars. However, both actors are surely assured of the Emmy and the Golden Globe and I'm surprised they didn't share the Best Actor prize at Cannes. Douglas, indeed, is the revelation here. He may not look much like Liberace but he has the mannerisms and the voice off pat.


Fundamentally, of course, it's a film about a failed marriage. It isn't the partners' sexuality that scuppers their relationship but fame, drugs, vanity and the large age difference between them. A heterosexual relationship in a similar situation would probably have gone much the same way. Yes, in Douglas' performance Liberace does come across as a temperamental old queen just as, in Damon's performance, Thorson comes over as a spolit, bad-tempered kept boy but the humanity of both men shines through as well. It's as if they were making the best of a bad situation and finding the pressures, particularly that of secrecy, more than they could cope with. While neither man would have been someone I might have chosen to be friends with, had I known them, (in some different celebrity universe), I think it would have been amiss of me not to have forgiven them their foibles. Soderbergh has said he intends to give up directing in the future; on the strength of this moving, witty, intelligent picture he will be sorely missed if he does.