Hiding in plain sight

Rating: 6/10 (31 July 2018)

The persecution of gay people in the 20th century had some strange side-effects. Take the career of Liberace, the celebrity pianist, who styled himself according to the most outre social conventions of the gay community, but sued anyone who mentioned his sexuality. Liberace also had a series of semi-contractual relationships with much younger men, which one can see as the sort of thing a certain type of rich person might chose to do, but which surely seemed more natural in a world where a more orthodox relationship was socially prohibited. Steven Sodebergh's film shows us scenes from Liberace's life, but also portrays a very odd person and it doesn't really manage to make us feel sympathetic at a personal level, however much one acknowleges the potentially hostile world he had to navigate. Perhaps a full biopic, showing how he became the man we see in this movie, would have been more revealing.