The late Richard Benner’s 1977 “Outrageous!” blazed trails as both a hit Canadian export and positive screen depiction of gay life, two relative rarities at the time. Even then, some gay viewers found the funny-sad friendship between a hairdresser/professional drag queen and a young schizophrenic woman a bit old-fashioned. But everybody was won over by Craig Russell’s stage impersonations of Hollywood stars — schmaltz and camp being a reliable combination for gay cinema with crossover ambitions.
That formula has scarcely altered 43 years later for “Stage Mother.” It’s the latest from Thom Fitzgerald, whose 1997 “The Hanging Garden” was also shot in Nova Scotia, and helped herald a new, perhaps more politically bold and artistically adventuresome generation of gay Canadian filmmakers. His more recent work has fitted into a time-tested mould of sentimental seriocomedy, however. This tale of a small-town Texas matron who inherits her estranged son’s San Francisco drag bar offers up smiles,...
That formula has scarcely altered 43 years later for “Stage Mother.” It’s the latest from Thom Fitzgerald, whose 1997 “The Hanging Garden” was also shot in Nova Scotia, and helped herald a new, perhaps more politically bold and artistically adventuresome generation of gay Canadian filmmakers. His more recent work has fitted into a time-tested mould of sentimental seriocomedy, however. This tale of a small-town Texas matron who inherits her estranged son’s San Francisco drag bar offers up smiles,...
- 7/2/2020
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
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