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Preview by: Jack Foley
A MOVIE musical based on the life of the song-writer, Cole Porter,
was one of a handful of movies which dared to take on the might
of Spider-Man 2, when it opened
at US cinemas over the Independence Day weekend.
Kevin Kline portrays the openly gay Porter, while Ashley Judd
stars as his muse and long-admiring wife, Linda - and the ensuing
film is said to offer cinema-goers a heady mix of enduring romance,
gay themes, pop stars, and Porter's music.
Pop stars such as Sheryl Crow and Robbie Williams appear on the
soundtrack, singing Porter classics such as Night and Day
and Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love.
Along with Irving Berlin, Porter is widely considered to be one
of America's greatest composers, whose Broadway and Hollywood
hits also include Just One of Those Things and Love For Sale.
But while the genius of his song-writing is frequently hailed,
his gay life, which was thinly masked by his marriage to Linda,
was often viewed as being too sensitive for film material.
A 1946 film about Porter, called Night and Day, and starring
Cary Grant, was mainly a fictional piece of work that made no
reference to his homosexuality.
De-Lovely, however, tackles the issue head-on, exploring the
contradictions of Porter’s relationships, which make for
a fascinating personal history.
According to Kline, the film ‘is not a gay movie about
a gay man; it's about a great composer and a unique love story.
It poses the question, what is love?’
As such, Porter's relationship with Linda is relayed via flashbacks,
at a time when Porter is nearing the end of his life and taking
stock of his past choices.
Director, Irwin Wrinkler’s movie unfolds as Porter sits
in the audience of a theatre and watches his life played in front
of him, in both staged theatrical numbers.
The story begins in Paris, in the 1920s, where he meets Linda,
and moves through his triumphant years in New York, and on to
Hollywood, for the old MGM musicals.
It includes the tragedy of the horse-back riding accident that
crippled him, and the torment of his love-life, during which he
would actively pursue men, while also maintaining his love for
Linda, who provided most of the inspiration for his songs.
It is due to open in the UK later this year.
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US reaction
Critics in America were somewhat divided over the merits of the
movie. Some heaped praise upon it, while others found it to be
awful.
The Philadelphia Inquirer spoke up for the film
by stating that, like a Porter song, De-Lovely has melancholy,
wit and style to burn’, while the negative reaction was
summed up by Newsday, which described it as ‘the
kind of escapist entertainment that has one hunting for an escape
route’.
The Los Angeles Times referred to it, simply,
as ‘De-lousy’, while the New York Times felt
that ‘you have the creepy sense of watching adult children
(with the singular exception of Mr. Kline, who can surmount any
disaster) dressed up in period costume at a school pageant’.
More positive, was Variety, which wrote that
‘keeping it all alive through all the dramatic ups and down,
and limited psychological and emotional complexity, is Kline’.
While the Chicago Tribune opined that it's hard
not be entertained by two dozen of Cole's best, sung winningly,
if not always brilliantly, by a company that includes Alanis Morissette,
Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow and (the best, fittingly) Natalie
Cole;.
And Rolling Stone declared that ‘in voice,
manner, patrician charm and private torment, Kevin Kline is perfection
as legendary composer Cole Porter’.
But Time Magazine lamented that ‘you enter
a movie with that title, prepared to be enchanted. You straggle
out a couple of hours later, lost in a fog of gloom’.
And Village Voice wrote that ‘Spike Jones
or 'Weird Al' Yankovic could scarcely have been more jarring than
the gaggle of preening pop stars invited to camp on the classics’.
Entertainment Weekly observed that the film
represented ‘something dishy and rare: a biopic about a
happy, and even enchanted, man’.
But LA Weekly rounds off this overview, by stating
that ‘if you're a Cole Porter fan you might like the songs
in De-Lovely, but as a portrait of an unusual marriage it's de-lumbering,
de-liberate and de-cidedly flat’.
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