Flawless
USA 1999
Reviewed by David Jays
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Walt (Robert De Niro), a retired security guard, lives in an apartment block on the Lower East Side in New York. When gangsters rampage through the building in search of stolen money, Walt tries to intervene but suffers a stroke. He is partially paralysed and his speech severely affected. In order to help his speech, he takes singing lessons with his neighbour Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a drag queen and performer. Despite their mutual suspicion, their sessions go well, and Walt meets Dusty's fellow drag artists.
Rusty confides to Walt that he has hidden the gangsters' money in a dressmaker's dummy and can now afford a sex-change operation. Walt recovers sufficiently to dance at his regular bar with a hostess whom he had previously snubbed. That night, hearing Rusty being beaten by the thugs, who suspect him of having their money, he intervenes. He and Rusty fight off and shoot their attackers, but Walt is wounded. Rusty pays for the emergency treatment with the money earmarked for his operation.
Review
Joel Shumacher's films are unsteady juggernauts. Brash liberalism hurtles alongside irresistible sentiment, precarious command of tone and flickering homoeroticism. A Time to Kill, his sweaty John Grisham adaptation, may be the most convincing of his films, but Flawless is enjoyable whenever the movie leaves its rails. A plot about stroke victim Walt learning song from drag queen Rusty conjures up such unpromisingly twinkling scenarios that it's good to see the characters resist togetherness. Ex-security guard Walt, played by Robert De Niro, proves resistant to campery, and bracing insult peppers the dialogue. Shumacher's screenplay cannily decoys its narrative of triumph-through-adversity when a dizzy queen assures Walt, "You have a My Left Foot thing going on, haven't you?" Rusty, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, also maintains a wry commentary of movie references: during the final chase, he rallies by thinking of "Grace Kelly in Rear Window".
Shumacher insists on correspondences between his protagonists, especially in the sequence in which they prepare for a night out to the strut and swoon of a tango soundtrack. Each defines himself through paraphernalia - Walt lives among his dusty history, his medal for bravery and celebratory cuttings, while Rusty's apartment is cluttered with powder brushes and photos of screen divas. While Walt clears the floor with a slow-step at the Private Dancer bar, so Rusty, glittering in amber, teasingly comperes the cabaret at Femmes Fatales. More importantly, they share statuesque self-sufficiency, refusing pity and compromise. Neither bursts into 'I Am What I Am', but you get the idea.
Flawless is a fractured picture, which is its most winning aspect. The apartment block is a heartbreak hotel for the elderly and the oddball. In an arresting stylistic tic, Walt's neighbour strums songs of abandonment through a half-open door. Jolts of inconsequentiality divert the film's inspirational progress. An old dame greets Walt's accident with, "You think that's bad? I didn't sleep a wink last night!" The violence forcing the plot may be monochrome, but it's echoed in equally perfunctory clashes between rowdy drag gangs ("I need some dykes!" squawks a nervous peacekeeper).
Like other tales of New York - Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), Taxi Driver (1976) - Flawless displays the freakshow of the lonely town. Walt's apartment sits in sullen puddles of blue-grey light and director of photography Declan Quinn (Leaving Las Vegas) and production designer Jan Roelfs (Orlando) create the perfect environment for characters living separate lives in intrusive proximity. Even in their confessional cups, Rusty and Walt choose to sit alongside each other rather than face-to-face.
The leads perform interesting variations on their screen personae. De Niro is celebrated for the demands he has made on his body during his career (notably Raging Bull), and suits this role of reluctant transformation. Walt strains for fitness (as in the opening ball game), but grim lines tug at his mouth even before the stroke cruelly accentuates them, and his performance subsequently squeezes through vocal and physical constraints. Hoffman is similarly an artist of insistent, creative fleshiness. His characters have an uncomfortable relationship with clammy corporeality (Happiness, Boogie Nights), or make their bulk an arrogant battering-ram (The Talented Mr. Ripley). Rusty, planning a sex-change, decorates but disdains his body. Hoffman also finds a terrific vocal register for the New Jersey queen, a husky plateau skating between sob and sass.
Credits
- Director
- Joel Schumacher
- Producers
- Joel Schumacher
- Jane Rosenthal
- Screenplay
- Joel Schumacher
- Director of Photography
- Declan Quinn
- Editor
- Mark Stevens
- Production Designer
- Jan Roelfs
- Music
- Bruce Roberts
- ©Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.
- Production Companies
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures presents a Tribeca production
- Executive Producer
- Neil Machlis
- Co-producers
- Caroline Baron
- Amy Sayres
- Associate Producer
- Eli Richbourg
- Production Co-ordinator
- Lori Johnson
- Unit Production Manager
- Kathleen McGill
- Location Manager
- Lauri Pitkus
- Assistant Directors
- Michael Steele
- Julie Bloom
- Kenneth Brown
- Script Supervisor
- Sheila Paige
- Casting
- Mali Finn
- Associate:
- Emily Schweber
- Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Camera Operator
- Patrick Capone
- Special Effects
- Co-ordinators
- Connie Brink
- Matt Vogel
- Art Director
- Sarah Knowles
- Set Decorator
- Leslie Pope
- Costume Designer
- Daniel Orlandi
- Key Make-up
- Margot Boccia
- Make-up
- Kelly Gleason
- Hair
- Key Stylist:
- Aaron Quarles
- Stylist:
- Sacha Quarles
- Orchestral Music performed by
- The EOS Orchestra
- Conductor
- Jonathan Sheffer
- Orchestrations
- Winfried Kraus
- Executive Music Producer
- Joel Sill
- Music Production Associate
- David Tobocman
- Music Producer
- Gohl/McLaughlin
- Music Editor
- Daryl Kell
- Supervising Recording Engineer
- Bob Schaper
- Soundtrack
- "Lady Marmalade", "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" - cast with additional vocals by Bruce Roberts; "Half Breed" - Nashom Benjamin; "Ashley's Song", "Tasha's Song" - Rory Cochrane; "Stouthearted Men" - Nelson Eddy; "Planet Love" - Taylor Dayne; "The Name Game"
- Choreography
- Keith Young
- Tango Choreographer/
Instructor - Paul Pellicoro
- Production Sound Recorder
- Gary Alper
- Re-recording Mixers
- Chris Jenkins
- Ron Bartlett
- Mark Smith
- Recordists
- Mark Narramore
- Pete Gregory
- Supervising Sound Editors
- John Leveque
- Anthony R. Milch
- Dialogue Editors
- Kimberly Lowe Voigt
- Mildred Iatrou
- Donald L. Warner Jr
- Sound Effects Editors
- Joseph DiVitale
- Aaron D. Weisblatt
- Additional Effects Recording
- Gary Blufer
- Sound Effects
- Co-ordinator
- John Michael Fanaris
- Supervising ADR Editor
- Becky Sullivan
- Foley
- Artists:
- John Roesch
- Michael Broomberg
- Recordist:
- Carolyn Tapp
- Mixer:
- Mary Jo Lang
- Supervising Editor:
- Shawn Sykora
- Technical Consultants
- John R. Corcoran
- Beverly Devine
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Eddie Yansick
- Film Extract
- New Moon (1940)
- Cast
- Robert De Niro
- Walt Koontz
- Philip Seymour Hoffman
- Rusty Zimmerman
- Barry Miller
- Leonard Wilcox
- Chris Bauer
- Jacko
- Skipp Sudduth
- Tommy Walsh
- Wilson Jermaine Heredia
- Cha-Cha
- Nashom Benjamin
- Amazing Grace
- Scott Allen Cooper
- Ivana
- Rory Cochrane
- Pogo
- Daphne Rubin-Vega
- Tia
- Vincent Laresca
- Raymond Camacho
- Karina Arroyave
- Amber
- John Enos
- Sonny
- Jude Ciccolella
- Detective Noonan
- Mina Bern
- Mrs Spivak
- Wanda De Jesus
- Karen
- Madhur Jaffrey
- Doctor Nirmala
- Mark Margolis
- Vinnie
- Shiek Mahmud-Bey
- Vance
- Luis Saguar
- Mr Z
- Kyle Rivers
- LeShaun
- Sammy Rhee
- Mr Pim
- Hyunsoo Lee
- Mrs Pim
- Richie LaMontagne
- Carmine
- Penny Balfour
- Cristal
- Winter B. Uhlarik
- Tasha
- Raven O
- Notorious F.A.G.
- Joey Arias
- Stormy
- Jackie Beat
- Gypsy
- Blake Willett
- Ingrid Rivera
- cops
- Craig Braun
- Paulie
- John Doumanian
- Mr Terzola
- Melissa Osborn
- tourist
- John Contratti
- customer
- Stacy Highsmith
- Denise
- Rod Rodriguez
- Alice Williams
- lesbians
- Antonette Schwartzberg
- Mrs Terzola
- Hamilton De Oliveira
- hotel janitor
- John Polce
- Walt stand-in
- Logan McCall
- John E. Mack
- EMS technicians
- John R. Corcoran
- physical therapist
- Matt Merchant
- man in crowd
- Kevin Aviance
- Coco Lachine
- Jose Angel Garcia
- Bruce Roberts
- singers
- Al Marz
- Cristal's boyfriend
- Michelle Robinson
- Nina Sonja Peterson
- dancers
- Larry Marx
- bar patron
- Mitchell Lichtenstein
- gay Republican spokesperson
- John Fink
- gay Republican lawyer
- Bret Kropp
- drag queen
- Cooley
- cop
- Constance Boardman
- reporter
- Lucy Cerezo-Scully
- Al Thompson
- paramedics
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Optimum Releasing
- 9,984 feet
- 110 minutes 57 seconds
- DTS
- In Colour
- Prints by
- DeLuxe