Drag comedies reached their successful apogee with Shakespeare In Love in which Gwyneth Paltrow put on pants and walked away with an Oscar. That followed many other drag king pictures (including Barbra Streisand in Yentl and Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria). There are even more drag queen comedies, with Some Like It Hot and Tootsie being the most famous and Mrs. Doubtfire, and the Wayans brothers dreadful White Chicks, recent examples.
The joke in every one of these films is the surrounding characters unquestioned believability in the star's drag getup—at least for a while. Sometimes the gag works to hilarious effect (Lemon and Curtis in Some Like It Hot, Robin Williams in Doubtfire) and sometimes not (La Streisand in Yentl, Whoopi Goldberg in The Associate). As an audience we have no choice but to believe in the deception as well because if we don't then the picture immediately sours. So, even though many of us on first being shown the character in full regalia think, 'That's a man in drag' or vice versa, we go along with the deceit.
I thought about this at the outset of Stage Beauty, the Shakespeare era dramedy in which Billy Crudup portrays Edward 'Ned' Kynaston, England's greatest female impersonator-actress in a time when women were barred from acting the Bard—or anything else for that matter. Backstage, after being attended to by his assistant Maria (Claire Danes), Kynaston is finally revealed in all his womanly glory when he coyly receives two female groupies in the dressing room who 'ooh' and 'aah' at his amazing feminine beauty. 'I guess it's going to be Yentl-Tootsie-Victoria' I thought upon glimpsing the pretty-but-obviously-a-man Crudup, but happily, the picture has more on its mind than being just a riff on the typical drag comedies.
The plot has strong elements of All About Eve—Danes 'borrows' the costumes to star in an illicit staging of Othello with real women and the King (Rupert Everett), intrigued and goaded on by his mistress after hearing this, rescinds the ban on women onstage—whereupon Danes becomes a celebrated actress, thus pushing Crudup out of a job and a career. But in amongst these typical plot machinations (including one involving Crudup's lover, the Duke of Buckingham, played by Ben Chaplin) there is an interesting exploration of gender roles. This is also one drag picture where we vividly see that gender bending is a decided turn-on for the characters.
The gender curiosity abounds on both sides and soon it seems that everyone's playing dress up (including the King and his mistress). But Crudup's character, we are led to believe, has had to play women for so long he doesn't know how to act the men's parts and if he's gay, straight, or just turned on by having sex in female attire. It takes the equally confused Danes, who has secretly worshipped him, to help him realize his true potential onstage and off (and seemingly invent Method acting at the same time).
Crudup is not someone easily loved and in past roles there has been a decided arrogance about his good looks that seemed to leap off the screen—a real turn off. It's in evidence here as well but there's also more depth and vulnerability to his performance. Danes, who plays a composite role from the stage version of both Maria the assistant and Margaret Hughes the actress brings her usual breathless enthusiasm to Maria but is less assured as the actress. I must confess a bias, however, as the role of the actress was originated onstage by my sister Susan Knight.
The movie's pinnacle comes in an intriguing, funny and sexy love scene between Crudup and Danes that begins when Danes, who has earlier glimpsed Crudup and Chaplin in bed, asks, 'What do men do together?' and gets a vivid demonstration wherein a Kama Sutra of positions is tried out. At that moment, Stage Beauty, in which characters easily sleep with men and women, depending on their availability, may seem to be the greatest backhanded compliment to bisexuality since Paul Verhoeven's erotic thriller, The 4th Man.
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It's Spanish divorcé Sofia's birthday and she has a surprise for her three grown daughters who have gathered in her Madrid apartment to celebrate. The doorbell rings and in walks her new suitor: a Czech named Eliska. Not only is the suitor younger than Sofia but she's also female and a foreigner! 'Come and give her a kiss, girls,' Sofia instructs and then after the girls dutifully do, sits down to play a Schubert piano duet with Eliska while the daughters watch, stunned. All this before the opening credits for My Mother Likes Women, the 2002 comedy from Spain that was directed by Daniela Fejerman and Inés Paris, and plays Oct. 29-Nov. 4th at Facets (www.facets.org).
The impact of the mother's new relationship mostly affects Elvira (Leonor Watling), whose character is filled with tremendous, though comedic, anxieties about her own sexuality and place in the creative universe (the mother's a successful concert pianist, one sister is a pop star, the third sister is seemingly fulfilled through motherhood and the father's a famous novelist). The snazzy, jazzy score simulates the action on the screen and at times the movie, a fizzy comedy that deepens as it goes along, seems to be a combo of Almodovar and Woody Allen. A charmer.
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DVD OF NOTE: Saved!, the hilarious black comedy set in a Christian high school is a contender for my 2004 Top Ten list and has recently arrived on DVD. The film features several queer characters and terrific performances from the hot young cast (including Heather Matarazzo who recently came out as a lesbian). The disk has a nice assortment of deleted scenes, making of featurettes as well as an Easter egg from out producer Michael Stipe worth searching for entitled 'Michael Stipe Wants You To Get Saved.' A must have.
