Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra will screen at the Cannes film festival.
Glitter and pathos abound in Steven Soderbergh's scintillating disco ball of an HBO movie (premiering May 26) starring Michael Douglas as Liberace, who was famous for his ring-covered fingers and a candelabra atop his piano, and always insisted to his largely older female audience that he was still shopping for a girlfriend.
Based on Scott Thorson's memoir about his five-year relationship with the older man – who, off-stage, goes by the name of "Lee" – the film traces a relationship that began in mutual loneliness, but soon grows into something twisted as Liberace molds his boy toy with plastic surgery to look like himself.
Essentially a dramatic two-hander, with lots of supporting prosthetics, it features a fine performance by Matt Damon as the vulnerable Scott (though, at 42, he's far older than Thorson was in reality), and a career high point for Douglas, completely convincing as Liberace the showman, alarming as the frightened and control-obsessed man beneath the wigs and shiny suits.
Supporting parts, mostly comic, include Rob Lowe as a plastic surgeon and pill-pusher with a face so tight it appears wrapped in plastic Dan Aykroyd as a harried agent and an unrecognizable Debbie Reynolds as Liberace's demanding Polish mom.
This is unabashedly trashy material; there's a lethal kick beneath the fizz, like a cocktail of champagne and embalming fluid.