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Velvet Goldmine
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Toni Collette, Eddie Izzard Rated: Adult, flashes of male nudity, scenes of homosexuality and good old union-card-carrying rock-star behaviour.
Mark LePage Plenty of people - the baffled survivors, the innocent young or the merely curious - are still looking for a way to explain the '70s. Todd Haynes blames Oscar Wilde. Velvet Goldmine takes its cue from the great wag, casting Wilde as the original self-conscious pop star. Jumping from 1854 Dublin to '70s London and '80s New York, Haynes's faux biopic on the glam-rock era borrows liberally from reality to pay homage to a decade's drama queens. The rock-opera look and murder-mystery premise of Velvet Goldmine are the glitter draped over a film about ideas, or an idea: real life is too drab to endure without the pretense of stardom - which eventually becomes your reality. By now, you may know the Velvet characters and their real-life correlatives: androgynous and ruthlessly ambitious Brit star Brian Slade (a Bowie look-alike played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers); his wasted American progenitor, Curt Wild (Iggy); shark-like manager Jerry Devine (Tony Defries); a few other conflations of Lou Reed, Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno; and Slade's wife, Mandy (Angie Bowie). As Mandy, actress Toni Collette's accent slips from Yank to Brit in the same sentence, a tart distillation of the film in one appropriated mannerism. And she tells the story. Briefly, after the aliens deliver Oscar Wilde to Earth (really) with a mysterious green brooch, we flip to swingin' London. Bored with class and sexual restrictions, the youth are, as one man bitterly (but accurately) describes, "parading around all ponced-up like a bunch of bleedin' poofters." One such, Brian Slade, has become a star by creating an alter-ego named Maxwell Demon, enrapturing a young fan named Arthur Stuart. At the height of his fame, Slade/Demon stages his own onstage murder. Flip to New York, '84. Stuart, now a journalist, has discovered the ruse and is trying to piece together the story. He interviews Mandy, now a discarded cabaret singer, who delivers the sordid details of the fabulously doomed past. We learn how Slade traveled to New York with his predatory manager to meet idol Curt Wild in a New York bar. As Wild, Ewan McGregor bears an eerie resemblance to Kurt Cobain, of which more later. Slade and Wild get together in every sense of the phrase. Characters who can resist everything except temptation, they drink and snort deeply from the pleasures and hazards of stardom, and then break up. The '70s are now distant enough to qualify as a period costume drama, and Haynes does it up right. Velvet Goldmine has the spandex skagged-out look down, and the music is a phantasmagoria of glam covers and originals. McGregor bravely does his own singing and, since no film performance could possibly out-Iggy Iggy, we can enjoy what he does with the part. His resemblance to Cobain, whether accidental or purposeful, is merely another flash in a kaleidoscope of rock-culture references, from events to cameos by members of Sonic Youth and the Stooges. But Haynes may be too smart - or too honest - for his own good. To quote Wilde, a little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. The theme of "otherness" as expressed by Brian Slade and absorbed - and eventually investigated - by Arthur Stuart is crystallized in gender expression. Let's just say Velvet Goldmine is gay-positive. But in celebRating oneow the '70s challenged what is "natural," Haynes spotlights the three "isms" - narcissism, hedonism, vampirism - and their unavoidable slide into decadence. So is it any good? Bowie fans probably won't like it, and reality fans may balk. Three-quarters through, Velvet Goldmine takes its mysterious-brooch McGuffin a step farther and simply decides to stop making sense with a left turn into orbit. Otherwise, Haynes's labour of love is a cult gem waiting for its midnight slot at the rep houses. Best of all, he has probably torpedoed Bowie's own plans for a Ziggy Stardust movie. Bitch. |