The casting of Michal Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover, the handsome young Scott Thorson, was a brilliant choice and both actors give one of their career best performances.
The film opens with Scott attending one of the flamboyant musician’s performances and meeting him backstage. It is 1977 and despite the new age of hippies, rock music and sexual freedom many of Liberace’s elderly female fans do not know he’s gay. The camp and outrageous Liberace zealously guards his reputation and even won a 1956 libel claim against a British newspaper that called him “mincing”.
But behind the scenes the 58 year old Liberace is sexually voracious and constantly surrounded by his young male lovers. When the 18 year old strikingly handsome Scott appears in Liberace’s dressing room he is invited home by the bejeweled pianist who invites him to “sleep over” and subsequently seduces him.
Scott is from a rough background and has grown up in a series of foster home. The glamour and wealth the Liberace displays is seductive. Scott moves into the Liberace mansion where he begins a life as a gilded kept boy surrounded by the famous Liberace kitsch of over blown mirrors, chandeliers and all that the money of America’s highest paid entertainer can buy.
This could easily become a bit queasy as the 58 year old Liberace lusts after and admires the teenage Scott but the sensitive portrayal of “Lee” as Liberace’s friends call him by Michal Douglas is a tour de force of acting that shows him as a sympathetic human being with a genuine concern for his young protégé’s well-being.
This is one of the best performances of Douglas in recent years and one of the best of his career. Matt Damon also gives a strong performance as the seduced Scott with a lot of scenes that show off his physique. There are also plenty of scenes of the two heterosexual actors making love as homosexuals that are very convincing and go further than we have seen in most mainstream entertainment films.
The two decent into a life of drugs, alcohol and mutual emotional interdependence that becomes claustrophobic as most of the action is within Liberace’s bizarrely decorated home. The sets seem to be a reflection of his personality and its difficult to figure out where the onstage and offstage Liberace starts and stops or if there really even is such a distinction.
But the most bizarre part of the story comes when Liberace arranges for Scott to have plastic surgery ostensibly to look more lime himself. Rob Lowe turns in another top notch performance as the sleazy plastic surgeon Dr Jack Startz. Both Liberace and Scott undergo extensive plastic surgery with Scott looking more like his elderly sponsor and Liberace looking like a younger version of himself. The make-up artists on the film deserve credit for a very convincing job on both men.
Despite their physical merging of image Liberace who by this time is also addicted to both porn and cocaine suggests that they each begin to see other men and the relationship goes on the skids.
The two break-up after five years together and Scott files a spectacular palimony case against Liberace that outs him as a homosexual and becomes one of the most celebrated court cases of its time in Hollywood.
Sonderbergh has molded the story into a masterful file that is enormously entertaining with great sets, script and wonderful acting. Despite its status as an HBO production and its world premier on TV in the USA the film will also have a theatrical release in many other countries where it looks like a box office winner.
Credits:
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Country: USA
Cast: Matt Damon, Michal Doublas, Dan Akroyd, Scott Bakula, Rob Lowe
