Behind The Candelabra

Michael Douglas is magnificent as flamboyant entertainer Liberace, with Matt Damon embracing the role of his younger lover, rugged animal wrangler Scott Thorson. Liberace and Thorson meet briefly in the late 1970s, and under the guise of driver and bodyguard, Thorson soon becomes Liberace's permanent live-in companion. Portrayed through bold love scenes, the two develop a convincing and highly dysfunctional co-dependent relationship. Liberace physically moulds Thorson into a younger version of himself, simultaneously projecting his yearnings for a son, lover, confidante and guardian. Thorson eventually develops a drug habit care of the 'California diet', a destructive concoction of prescribed barbiturates provided by Dr Startz. Performed by a fantastic Rob Lowe, Startz is an opportunistic and grotesque caricature deformed by a severe amount of plastic surgery and self-medication, while Dan Ackroyd and Debbie Reynolds play almost unrecognisable supporting roles in the film. Filled with extravagant emotional excesses of love and jealousies that rival the grandeur of their palatial kitsch mansion, the combination of too much leaves Liberace and Thorson feeling unbearably lonely, which eventually consumes their relationship. In what Steven Soderbergh has discussed as his final work for the foreseeable future, HBO produced this cine-biopic due to criticism of it being 'too gay'.