One of the more noticeable subgenres of indie drama, over the past few years, is the Finally, A Lead movie – in which a beloved supporting player is, at long last, given a leading role to display the full range of their charms and gifts. Blythe Danner got hers with “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” Sam Elliot followed suit with “The Hero,” Harry Dean Stanton had “Lucky,” and now, in “Swan Song,” it’s Udo Kier’s turn.
The German character actor stars as Pat Pistenbarger (“a true icon,” per the opening titles), who was once the most fabulous man in Sandusky, Ohio, doing the hair of the town socialites by day and partying at the town drag bar all night. He had a long-time love, friends, and a successful salon, but a hard cut early in the film jars us into his far less glamorous reality. He wakes up in a hospital bed in an assisted living facility, where the soundtrack isn’t disco music, but PA announcements like “Our special item of the day: fruit cocktail!” It’s a dull, stifling existence, though he retains some of his bad-boy spirit, occasionally wheeling a near-comatose friend off into the stairway to smoke.
And then, a lawyer in a sharp suit shows up to inform Pat that one of his former clients (Linda Evans) has passed away. “Rita specified in her will that you were to do her hair and make-up for the funeral,” he’s told, but Pat isn’t interested; there was apparently some sort of feud and estrangement, many years ago, and he’s still nursing a grudge. “You would deny a great woman her dying wish?” the lawyer asks, and perhaps because of that – or, more likely, out of boredom and desperation – he decides to sneak out of the facility and do the job.
In the process, he wanders through town, catching up with old friends and enemies, real and imagined. He’s something of a man out of his time – once too cool for this small town, now barely a blip in its history. “Nobody remembers me,” he despairs, to the kid pouring drinks at his old bar. “I used to perform here. Every Saturday night.” Some humor is found in the culture clash between him and his surroundings, and writer/director Todd Stephens takes advantage of plopping a weirdo like Udo into this town and watching what happens.
Stephens wrote the milestone queer film “Edge of Seventeen,” but his best-known directorial credits are “Another Gay Movie” and its sequel, and you can feel him struggling with his tone and approach here. The pacing is wobbly – it runs a too-flabby 105 minutes – and some of the filmmaking is pretty rickety, dropping in awkward slow-motion and blown-out lighting to create fantasy sequences and replicate Pat’s uncertain headspace, throwing in unnecessary, echo-chamber callbacks of explainer dialogue.
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But “Swan Song” is about its performers, and they shine. Jennifer Coolidge is doing some new and really interesting things as Pat’s protégé-turned-rival; the two of them spend a scene growling and glowering at each other, years of resentment and bitterness bubbling and boiling over, yet both resist the urge to overplay. And Kier, of course, is wonderful, reveling in the opportunity to play all sorts of emotions (rather than the one – usually stern malice – required by most of his recent directors). He has a scene of grief at a gravestone that is just overwhelming, yet we also get to watch him cut loose at the drag show, which is pure joy. Both of those extremes, and everything in between, is about that face – that hard, defined face, a face that has seen some things, and seems capable of any reaction. It’s a good face, and kudos to “Swan Song” for letting us gaze upon it for so long. [B-]
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