Pat (Udo Keir) lives in an old folks home. He's bored, under stimulated, and spends a lot of his time being mildly rebellious, smoking cigars with mute residents on landings, and endlessly refolding paper handkerchiefs. He appears to be slowly losing the will to live. Then a solicitor visits, he represents an old socialite customer of Pat's, Rita ( Linda Evans) who has died, and requested he dress the hair of her corpse.
At first he refuses. She'd dumped him, for a rival hairdresser, Dee Dee Dale ( Jennifer Coolidge ) who used to work for him. There's a lot of troubled history, meaning he just couldn't fulfill the request. But gradually he changes his mind and sets off walking, on a journey ostensibly to buy hairdressing supplies. But this entails revisiting a lot of painful places, familiar situations, and inevitably his relationship with David, his partner who died of AIDS.
There are many ways in which this film is a 'swan song'. For Pat revisiting his former life as a high society hairdresser for one last time, the period when he was a part time drag artist, then a man in a loving queer relationship. The film is unexpectedly grim, particularly about late life care. Pat, throughout the film, you see visually rediscover himself as the flamboyant gay man of old. His journey causing him to reflect on the form of his past gay lifestyle, now that this too is passing. Represented by the local gay bar about to close down. Places that once provided gay safe spaces, collective culture and support, now reach their own 'swan song'. Even how you can be gay having changed beyond recognition.
Udo Kier magnificently holds the whole film together, for most of its running time. A face like granite, eyes flashing with mischief and a mind filled with waspish banter. You do really feel for him, in his fight, late in life, to regain some independence and meaning in his life
Todd Stephens who wrote and directed it, does so with an unflinching honesty. Never taking the time honoured clichéd route, without throwing you a curve ball. This is at times a sombre movie, with a kernel of stern warm heartedness, that never gets schmaltzy.
CARROT REVIEW - 5/8
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