What can I tell you about De-Lovely, Irwin Winkler’s musical biopic on the life of Cole Porter? It’s disappointing, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s engaging and more than pleasurable enough to warrant your time and the cost of a ticket. When it clicks, it’s amazing. When it falters, the result isn’t fatal. It takes a lot of risks, which more often than not succeed to great effect. There are times when the set pieces, acting, dialogue, lighting almost melt as the film combines it with Porter’s wistful, ruminating music and you can feel the flood of emotion surpassing contextual detail.
Borrowing from other films, such as Pennies from Heaven, A Chorus Line, and especially All That Jazz, De-Lovely's music spills over into reality. Performance as artifice is deconstructed. Kevin Kline (as Porter) and Ashley Judd (Porter’s wife Linda) are inspired casting choices. Kline can seem self-absorbed without being dull. His desire to be liked makes us forget his compulsive need for attention. His performance, which feels restrained (for him) has just the right mix of charm and bravado to buffer Porter’s egotism. Judd has a quiet, luminous air of sophistication that never comes off as cold or detached. The costumes (by Clare Spragge and Giorgio Armani) have an understated glamour that is dazzling without being ostentatious. It does go on a bit long, and there’s an annoying ambivalence (if that’s what it is) towards the material that diminishes the film.
At the onset of De-Lovely, the aged Porter is visited by a man named Gabe, who orchestrates a musical of Porter’s life, just for him. Porter reacts and reminisces throughout, but the players (including himself in the past) cannot hear him. The focal point of the film is Porter’s marriage to Linda. He explains very early in their relationship his sexual predilection for men; he never hides it from her. When they marry, she does not function as a beard. (She says, "I think you like men more than I do," one of the best and most telling lines). They have an understanding, rather than an arrangement, which eventually causes them both intense anguish and remorse.
Presumably, if queer sex weren’t stigmatized, Porter could have acted on his same-gender romantic impulses without being such an opportunist. By all accounts, he was forthright about his tastes, but had to pay extortionists to keep this information from the public at large. Winkler uses the marriage to beg the question of Porter’s bi-sexuality. But he never makes it clear whether he blames Porter or the times in which he lived.
Article comments
1 - chancelucky
Nicely done review. I had missed the fact that the man putting on the Porter musical was the Angel Gabriel or based on "Blow Gabriel Blow".
I agree, one of the weaknesses of the movie was that it seemed to go there with an honest look at Porter's life with the mirror of the earlier Porter biopic, but then backed off in the oddest places. I don't think Ashley Judd got enough credit for pulling off a role that just wasn't all that well written.