“I’m surprised that these people like something this gay,” says Matt Damon’s wide-eyed, country boy Scott Thorson as he watches Liberace for the first time.
We share in his bafflement when he is told that the adoring audience don’t have the slightest inkling of his sexuality.
This is the bizarre, complicated and, above all, wonderful world of Liberace.
Behind the Candelabra was released as a television movie through HBO in America but comes to us on the big screen and isn’t the biggest possible screen just what Liberace would have wanted?
Michael Douglas gives an incredible performance as the flamboyant pianist and revels in the wigs, rings, diamonds and furs that make up his stage show.
Eschewing the standard biopic route, the film tells the story of Liberace’s relationship with Thorson who became his chauffeur, lover and even, the film alleges, almost became his adopted son.
Thorson is welcomed into the “palatial kitsch” of Liberace’s life and their relationship moves through drugs, plastic surgery and endless champagne fuelled baths to something resembling a tempestuous marriage.
The film lays bare some of the behind the scenes moments that the Vegas audiences would be shocked to discover.
Without his wigs, Liberace is bald headed and almost unrecognisable, while suing the British press for suggesting that he is gay Liberace speaks of reconciling his sexuality with his Catholicism.
Public and private appearances have never been so complexly entwined.
Yet what really elevates the film is the humour and sense of fun throughout.
Rob Lowe’s appearance as a detestable plastic surgeon that can barely move his face is hilarious while the lavish lifestyle and assorted hangers on are a gallery of grotesques.
It’s hard to tell whether Liberace would appreciate a film that tells his most intimate secrets, but it’s certain that he would have approved of the life, colour and style.
As he says in the film, “all I ever wanted to do was make people happy”, and Behind the Candelabra certainly succeeds on those terms.
Words: Alastair Mitchell
