After Side Effects, supposedly his final work for the cinema, Steven Soderbergh has now apparently performed his post-swansong. Behind the Candelabra was commissioned for HBO television but is shown here in the Cannes festival competition as a standalone feature-length drama: a bizarre anti-Pinocchio parable in which the power of loneliness and toxic love transform a handsome young man into a deeply unhappy, plump-nosed, cleft-chinned latex doll. It's the true-life story of the flamboyant pianist Liberace and his young companion and chauffeur Scott Thorson, taking us from the couple's ecstatic first meeting backstage in Las Vegas in 1976 to Liberace's death from an Aids-related illness in 1987.
The film is mesmeric, riskily incorrect, outrageously watchable and simply outrageous. Unlike ITV's Vicious, which stars two famously gay actors, Behind the Candelabra does not offer any extra-textual liberal assurances in its casting. Michael Douglas is very funny as the great man himself, a primped and toupéed peacock of the ivories whose undoubted technical genius at the keyboard means he does not need to rehearse, and whose excess energy and artistry is channelled into chasing after young men. Matt Damon is Scott, the pert animal trainer and would-be veterinarian who wins Liberace's heart by artlessly offering to treat his blind poodle, Babyboy. Dan Aykroyd plays Liberace's glowering manager, Heller, and the recipient of his antisemitic wisecracks. ("No you can't come for dinner, we're having pork!") And Debbie Reynolds plays the only woman in Liberace's life, his elderly mother, Frances.
Scott is first taken by a boyfriend to see Liberace at his Las Vegas show, and Soderbergh shows how he is transported by the showmanship and weirdly infected by the congregation-worship of well-to-do and largely female retirees. "They have no idea he's gay!" whispers Scott's friend. Scott had been listening to Donna Summer in the previous scene at a disco, and there is evidently no unbridgeable gap between Summer's music and that of Liberace. Introduced in his dressing room, Scott's instant rapport with Liberace is greeted with icy disdain by the young male courtiers whose star is now on the wane: those pursed-lipped, eye-rolling proteges and houseboys who now see that they are about to be discarded. Michael Douglas's Liberace has a kind of monstrous, grotesque charm and radioactive star-quality which helps him to remain in a state of denial about the bad feeling his caprices cause; he needs an army of enablers to help him forget about the hearts he is breaking.
Soon he and Scott are inseparable, and instantly embark on a horrendous career of emotional codependency, indulging a joint addictive passion for alcohol, drugs, fan love, mutual smothering reassurance – and plastic surgery. After being horrified by his ageing appearance on Johnny Carson ("I look like my father in drag") and disapproving of Scott's weight gain (like "Judy during the Sid Luft 'obese' period") Liberace contacts sinister cosmetic surgeon Dr Jack Startz (Rob Lowe) to transform his own looks and make Scott look like a younger Liberace: a macabre operation intended to turn his lover into the son he never had but which transforms him into a mannequin-figure who has to wear a ridiculous chauffeur's outfit on and off stage.
They make occasional forays to see Liberace's elderly querulous mum (Reynolds), a slots enthusiast in whose front parlour Liberace has installed a one-armed bandit. This, however, fails to pay out any actual coins when she hits the notional jackpot during their visit: an embarrassed Liberace has to ask the maid if she has any cash on her – a brutal metaphor for Vegas values.
It can't end well. And it doesn't. But there are a number of fascinatingly opaque tonal shifts along the way. Behind the Candelabra starts off super-camp and hyper-kitsch and long after the storm of parting it ends up gently sentimental and celebratory. In between, the movie is eerily and fascinatingly affectless and airless; the couple rarely go outside and socialise with other celebs. We are locked in their bizarre private world, a preposterously furnished palace-cum-prison which is like an anti-gravity capsule in which they float around in their own neuroses and dependencies. Rings – the fat gold bands around almost every finger – form an interesting currency in Liberace's dysfunctional world: he challenges the audience to admit he can play brilliantly despite this chunky jewellery; he loves giving rings to his conquests; they hang on to them as a form of capital – and one disgraced ex-lover is forced to hand his back.
The title is interesting too. "Behind" the candelabra? The candelabra conceals nothing, in the literal sense – unlike Liberace's wig. And in the metaphorical sense? Liberace doesn't have secrets from us, the audience. The comic grammar of the movie resides in the sheer obviousness of everything they're getting away with in private. But were the American public, as Scott's friend claimed, really unaware of Liberace's true nature? Or were they more worldly and unworried than we think? Liberace denies being gay to the press, and prides himself on a libel victory against a Fleet Street paper, but we know the operatic truth. Scott challenges him on the issue of being discreet, not hypocritical. But who are the hypocrites anyway? The heterosexuals of showbusiness loved excess and kitsch and bad taste too; they also loved abusive relationships, vanity and cosmetic surgery, and rich older guys loved to be "sugar daddies".
As a black comedy, and as a portrait of celebrity loneliness, Behind the Candelabra is very stylish and effective, and Damon and Douglas give supremely entertaining performances.
