By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca

Cannes Competition Review: Behind The Candelabra

“Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”

Resembling the face of Liberace himself, Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra is a dazzling albeit saggy film, made competently and with sincere respect to its topic despite losing steam in its second hour. Had this not been Soderbergh’s purported swan song, it’s unclear if Candelabra would normally be required viewing; nevertheless, the picture is entertaining and altogether a safe bet, debuting next week on HBO in the U. S. May 26. (The statistics on who watches will make for a very interesting post-mortem.)

Adapting Scott Thorson’s 1988 memoir “Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace,” Soderbergh rejoins frequent collaborators Matt Damon and Michael Douglas to dramatize the affair between Liberace (Douglas) and his substantially younger lover (Damon). The film drops at a time when same-sex marriage debates are turning into real results, with twelve states having extended marriage laws (and the inherent legal benefits) to include gay and lesbian couples. In that way, Behind the Candelabra is certainly relevant; exacting the reality of what happens to relationships—straight or otherwise—if the proper paperwork isn’t signed or agreed upon. The film also wrestles with the idea that things would be different had Liberace and Thorson met today, but Soderbergh likely could have said more here; using his critical authority visible in his recent “State of Cinema” keynote speech to advance the politics further would have been welcome.

Audiences will boot up Candelabra expecting a film about Liberace, but this is really Scott Thorson’s story and specifically Matt Damon’s chance to shine. It’s easy to focus on Douglas’ performance as Liberace and extol it as the film’s biggest showcase, but Soderbergh gives Damon the opportunity to play and experiment: Thorson’s emotional barometer wavers far more than Liberace’s does. Damon’s wide-ranging performance aims high and succeeds, digging deep and going for broke in the film’s more desperate scenes. So while Douglas embodies Liberace with indisputable skill and showmanship, the picture trains not on the star-studded spotlight but immediately outside of it, keeping Thorson’s perspective front and center at all times (not unlike 2011’s My Week with Marilyn). Supporting the pair is Rob Lowe as a squinting plastic surgeon, his inert facial expressions stealing the show with big laughs.

Like Brokeback Mountain before it, the film should put another dent in society’s homophobia, which seems partly the reason why Soderbergh wanted to make this picture (eventually taking it to HBO because of Hollywood rejection). Commendable. It’s certainly an engaging story (and sold perfectly by Damon and Douglas), but things run out of steam by the second half, the relationship becoming too by-the-numbers to engage like the first hour does. The cycle of Liberace’s lovers—Adonises on a conveyor belt in-and-out the door—is touched upon, working to underline a clinching jealousy that Damon channels so well in the spacious run-time. But because of the lagging pace, Behind the Candelabra is not a great movie but a competent Soderbergh picture; existing as most competent Soderbergh pictures do in his filmography (and there are a lot of them). While the nostalgic set pieces and character performances are indelible, the film’s stretched thin to diminishing returns, proving too much of a good thing isn’t all that wonderful—just a little flat.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon