Velvet Goldmine

Maxwell Demon aka Brian Slade.  He's tried of wasting gas living above the planet, apparently.

You've got to love a film that starts with Oscar Wilde as a baby being left on a doorstep by aliens.

I mean, if we're going to rate films that's got to be worth a couple of stars right from the get-go.

Velvet Goldmine is a film that starts in just such a way.  In fact, the first twenty minutes or so is really just a delirious dream of music, disconnected scenes, strange images.  A twenty minute window to ask yourself 'what is this crap?' and walk out of the cinema.

Or you can stay and be corrupted.

What you will see, if you do stay, is a fictionalised account of David Bowie's 70's and 80's career featuring other figures from the period in what we might call a 'film a clef'.  Todd Haynes, the director, pulled off the same trick with 'Im Not There' - his non-biography of not Bob Dylan.

How you feel about Velvet Goldmine may depend on how much you can buy into this concept. It can be disconcerting to see Brian Slade (Bowie) singing songs by Roxy Music and Cockney Rebel, songs which are framed as 'by him' in the film - but you know they're not... er... so disbelief has to be suspended.  But so what - this is, essentially, a musical after all.

If you love the music of this period then you are likely to love this film.  And if you grew up sexually and genderly confused, as I did, than you are basically a platform shoe-in.  But there's much more to it than tunes, references and fellow feeling.

The performances make it.  Ewan Mcgregor as Curt Wild (Iggy) is dangerous, sexy, debauched.  I mean, he gets his cock out.  He literally does.  Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Brian Slade is beautiful, assured, tearful, pouting.  A diva.

Eddie Izzard is wonderful as the Epstein like manager, Toni Collette takes the Angie Bowie type role of Brian's wife and collaborator in sin - she does the cod English accent, the tantrums, the glamour, including the faded glamour...

And Christian Bale depicts with painful accuracy the teenage fan - skinny and fawning and so, so embarrassed.  You remember that blushing, cringing agony you felt every second through years 13 to 19?  It hurts to watch.  Then we see him later on as an investigative journo trying to find out what happened to Brian Slade after his faked death...   but that's to drag (no pun intended)  the whole thing  down into such mundane matters as plot.

The plot is, probably, silly.  I am too much in love to know.  The whole film may be rejected by macho lads like the ones we see depicted in a record shop...  'Brian Slade?  He's a poof that one'. My own macho chums certainly didn't take a shine to it.  They saw the bisexuality of the glam rock scene as a sideshow.  That's the thing with glam - you can see whatever you want in glittery reflected backgrounds.

It will be anathema to some - and a work of genius to others.  What more could we ask from any work of art?  

Nothing - except to get a peek at Ewan's winkie - and we've even been given that.