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Posturing like an avante garde indy flick, drab cinema verite art direction and all, the only thing missing is Harvey Keitel. But the getting-to-know-you saga about a drag queen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who helps his macho antithesis (Robert De Niro) recover from a stroke is much more Hollywood than it is Sundance. Decrying prejudice in all forms, Flawless brims with commercially packaged outrage -- the sort that gives audiences the self-satisfying notion that they've just contributed to world understanding. If someone asks you to donate to a liberal cause you can say you gave at the theatre.
In this corner, probably hailing from Hell's Kitchen or Red Hook or someplace that sounds like that, is Robert De Niro as Walt "The Wall" Koontz, retired hero cop and homophobe extraordinaire. And in this corner, from Paramus, New Jersey, his supposed opposite (but of course we enlightened folk know better), Philip Seymour Hoffman as Rusty, the consummate self-effacing boy-girl. Following the film's opening bell, when Walt suffers a stroke trying to thwart a drug money vendetta in the flea bag hotel where he resides, the dipole duo's fates are tossed together.
Ashamed of his condition and frustrated by a painfully slow recovery, Walt takes the movie's first fantasy leap when he is told that voice lessons could help restore his speech: He solicits his heretofore disdained neighbour to provide said singing lessons. Tying in with one of the movie's several superfluous sub-plots, Rusty has more than one reason for agreeing to provide the melodious tutorials. Thus the battle of wits and emotions begins. And though you can't quite hear it, the tacit center-ring instruction is, "Come out bantering, and may the best man (or whoever) win."
Of course the singing classes are just a front for filmmaker Schumacher's greater humanitarian ambitions. That we are all brothers beneath the skin, even if that epidermis is covered with all manner of Maybelline, is the altruistic message he aims to spread. And admittedly, it is applied with a rather thick mascara brush. But the sessions are diverting nonetheless, thanks mostly to fine acting performances by Messrs. Hoffman and De Niro as they do their highly appealing rendition of duelling libidos. Each feels the need to defend his sexual preference.
Mr. Hoffman, who previously wowed filmgoers with a much darker sexual confusion in Todd Solondz's Happiness, transcends the stereotype popularised in films like The Birdcage, breathing lively energy and wit into the lonely but effervescent homosexual who hopes to one day purchase a sex change operation. A self-appointed philosopher for the divergent and misunderstood, the transsexual is known as Busty Rusty at the gay night club where he/she does a red hot momma act in the tradition of Sophie Tucker and Belle Barth ("If I embarrass you, tell your friends"). It's a seedy little place, a metaphor reflective of Rusty's life in general. But while director-writer Schumacher's hackneyed script certainly suffers its shortcomings, the quips and one-liners it supplies to form Rusty's persona and patter are simply delightful.
Strutting his superbly understated stuff in the contrasting role, De Niro does a snazzy balancing act, mimicking stroke symptoms and uncannily simulating the slow road to recovery. His ingeniously exacted gradations of improvement impart a lesson in thespian subtlety.
No such luck with the film's supporting performances, which are rarely little more than window dressing. A humorous exception is the daily bedside gaggle of bromidic pals who flit in and out of Rusty's flat. They serve as comic relief while also providing shock value for De Niro's amusingly chagrined straight man. Most of the other secondary portrayals, aside from helping keep the nation's unemployment rate low, merely furnish bodies for Flawless's perfunctorily etched side business. There are at least 5 (count 'em, 5) mini-plots to wade through.
The extraneous sub-texts include: the murderously vile drug thugs in dire search of their ripped-off funds; Walt's oddly romantic relationship(s) with two women (Wanda De Jesus and Daphne Rubin-Vega) at a dime-a-dance joint he regularly frequented before his illness; Rusty's surprising scheme to acquire the surgery that he feels will make him "a real woman"; the anxiously awaited drag queen pageant which shares its title with this film; and then there's the feeling of dread that surrounds Barry Miller as creepy Leonard, the snake-in-the-grass desk clerk whose informing ways could put all those concerned in harm's way. But all that this rigmarole really does is point out the inherent inadequacies of the main plot.
It becomes apparent that while the zingers fly fast and furious, there is only occasional substance in the droll repartee. Schumacher has nothing new to add to the timeworn relationship tale. Hence, with neither the bigot nor the homosexual sketched in 3-dimensional depth, the viewer is never fully drawn into their connection.
Stories dealing in the very intimate, mind-to-mind combat that comprises this genre, must possess a searing honesty. That's just for starters. If they are to be completely absorbing, like Educating Rita, The Dresser or the truly sublime My Dinner With Andre, then they require the elegantly fine detail of a Faberge egg melded with the intellectual ebullience that only attends truly inspired character study. But while engaging and full of goodwill, placed next to these brilliant jewels the rather tarnished Flawless is only a minor gem; the kind that will show best 6 months from now when it's available on videotape.
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