Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

MICHAEL DOUGLAS – MATTA DAMON – BEHIND THE CANDELABRA – MA VIE AVEC LIBERACE

Let’s remain short on this one.

Liberace is a myth in show biz. A gay piano performer who all his life hid his orientation under a fake heterosexual liaison that had no real material density at all. All his life he ran after younger twinks to feel his youth back again, with a few implants. That was before the blue pill of Viagra. But one day he tried a new one who was probably slightly better than the others, more special. Description from the urban Dictionary: “An attractive, boyish-looking, young gay man. The stereotypical twink is 18-22, slender with little or no body hair, often blonde, dresses in club wear even at 10:00 AM, and is not particularly intelligent. A twink is the gay answer to the blonde bimbo cheerleader.“That Scott accepted to have his face reshaped into a semblance of Liberace’s. He accepted all kinds of crazy sex but he refused to be taken from behind, some old fear of the dark I guess, since he was let’s say an orphan who had been raised in foster care and who found the perfect foster family to support him. In other words he was not “a blonde bimbo cheerleader.3

He was attracted by the light, the gold, the gems and jewels, the white uniform though it looked more like a sentimental sweet Halloween costume to impress old ladies, or old queens, white fur coat included. He resisted nothing except that visitor at the back entrance. Pathetic! I guess then Liberace was impressed and as long as the resistance was active he went on trying. He even tried to compensate the frustration by trying to adopt Scott as his proper son, or was it a con from a con-artist? But that kind of theatrical sublimation did not work at all. So time had come to get rid of the gnat. And Liberace did in one swat.

Till death them parted! And just before that sad AIDS moment he called Scott to come and take his last words, watch his last tears, shed some crocodile tears out of confusion and frustration. We are not told what the will gave him.

The film ends up with the cardiac arrest caused by a heart failure, turned into the sequels of the AIDS virus by some coroner’s office.

The film tries to end the show, that must go on anyway, with a love song, in fact a long poem recited by Liberace to his own piano music and that song is a marvelous love song indeed, the love song of an older man to a younger man – though it could be to a younger woman all the same. The age difference that Liberace could not deal with made him over sexual whereas there comes an age when a man can love with love and not lust with sex. Liberace never found that epiphany that would have redeemed him from total fright in front of his own age. It is so good to love someone who is younger, a lot younger than you even, just for the love of him or her, for the heat and the emotion you feel in your heart that is not invaded by some hormonal and endocrinal greed.

There comes an age when the wolf in man can finally go to sleep and let the platonic emotions of the loving phoenix come out of the shadow of the receding night that will bring the illumination of the last call. To be reborn instantly from its own empathetic ashes. To be reborn instantly in the lasting memory of the loved one’s responsive soul.

A beautiful film about a time when love was not accepted in the narrow circles of the straight fundamentalism of fairy bashing.

But let me give you the final sentimental, slightly over sugary love song that sounds like a Hallmark Valentine’s.

Why do I love you?

I love you not only for what you are,

But for what I am when I’m with you

I love you not only for what you have made of yourself,

But for what you are making of me.

I love you for ignoring the possibilities of the fool in me,

And for accepting the possibilities of the good in me.

Why do I love you?

I love you for closing your eyes to the discords in me,

And for adding to the music in me by worshipful listening.

I love you for helping me to construct of my life

Not a tavern but a temple

I love you because you have done so much to make me happy.

You have done it without a word, without a touch, without a sign

You have done it by just being yourself

Perhaps after all, that is what love means

And that is why I love you.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU