Reasonable film spun out of not much

Rating: 6/10 (4 August 2013)

My wife, who finds homosexuality repulsive, insisted on seeing this film, probably as a result of childhood memories of seeing Liberace on the TV. I knew very little about him, my impression was a kind of Benny Hill without the laughs, not that I am a fan of Benny Hill.
The cinema was quite full, entirely of hetero couples like ourselves old enough to remember Liberace, or at least his name. I don't think anyone walked out, though my wife says she nearly did in the early part.
I must commend the scriptwriter for drawing a coherent and mostly engaging script out of lives that were lived from moment to moment with little or no regard to thematic content. Like many successful artists, Liberace seems to have lived mainly for his art, if you will pardon the expression, and the pleasures that money can buy. This is not promising material, and if it were not for the Scott Thorson story element the film could not have been made. As it is, much use is made of anecdotal events to pad out the rather thin drama.
Michael Douglas does give depth to a character who appeared two dimensional in the filmed performances I have seen, it deserves an award of some kind, and he can be proud of it. Matt Damon is impressive as Scott Thorson, a young man utterly swept away in a tide of glitz, away from the life he had hoped for as a veterinarian. These two actors do manage to let us care what happens to their characters, when it would have been so easy to fall into cliché.
The direction is good, unostentatious craftsmanship, the atmosphere becomes increasingly claustrophobic as the tensions rise, and the wonky plot lines are neatly traversed. To me the end feels tacked on, but I don't think they had much option. As the film drew on I began to thirst for a female face, and towards the end when some girl dancers appeared, out of focus, behind Liberace, I drank them in like a camel in the desert. The constant close-ups of men you wouldn't buy a used car from gets a bit wearing, but this, I presume, is what Mr Soderbergh intended. The net impression is of lives and talents squandered. The audiences are next to invisible, and only now and then audible. Liberace was, maybe, his own audience.
Not a film I would have chosen to see, but not time entirely wasted.