It's ironic that this film begins right as "The Naked Civil Servant" is being broadcast to great a claim. You could have had a young actor playing John Hurt meeting Quentin Crisp played by John Hurt, but you don't. What you get is a view of crisps later life as he resettled in New York City only to find that the gay world of free gay men isn't a world that he relates to. He becomes sort of a cult icon doing sold out talks, but his controversial attitudes get him into trouble as he obviously is a person with an attitude from a different era. In fact, at times, he seems to be a gay male version of the Countess of Grantham from "Downton Abbey". 20-something young gay men look at him as a freak, and he's kicked out of a tough leather bar for being way out of place. But others look into him as a mentor, and it's those moments that are touching rather than depressing.
You can't help love some of his attitudes. I especially like "Why walk on the sunny side of the street when the sun is really in the center?" At times, Crisp is truly lovable but other times he is completely insufferable as he expects to find elements of the gay life that he's known which sadly did not include love. He may have had partners, but the fact that he openly admits that he's actually never been in love truly is sad. It is nice seeing parts of Manhattan you normally don't see, especially the lower east side and glimpses of what Christopher Street would have look like in 1983.
Dennis O'Hare is great as a struggling journalist who becomes his confident, and Swoozie Kurtz is delightfully feisty as his agent. Cynthia Nixon play the performance art character named Penny Arcade, but she is not fully developed outside of her cliches. Jonathan Tucker is sweet and vulnerable as the young gay artist who helps Crisp see some modern truths, while he learns old fashioned unchallenged values proving that "When you become a teacher by your pupils you'll be taught." The era of AIDS and Act Up is far different from anything that Crisp ever saw, and indeed, this does show the cold pretentious side of the scene that is rarely dealt with honestly in movies. Not a great movie, but it enlightening one with Hurt pregnant again the second time around, and a reminder that while we do not have a perfect world, it's the only world we've got so we're going to make the best of it.
You can't help love some of his attitudes. I especially like "Why walk on the sunny side of the street when the sun is really in the center?" At times, Crisp is truly lovable but other times he is completely insufferable as he expects to find elements of the gay life that he's known which sadly did not include love. He may have had partners, but the fact that he openly admits that he's actually never been in love truly is sad. It is nice seeing parts of Manhattan you normally don't see, especially the lower east side and glimpses of what Christopher Street would have look like in 1983.
Dennis O'Hare is great as a struggling journalist who becomes his confident, and Swoozie Kurtz is delightfully feisty as his agent. Cynthia Nixon play the performance art character named Penny Arcade, but she is not fully developed outside of her cliches. Jonathan Tucker is sweet and vulnerable as the young gay artist who helps Crisp see some modern truths, while he learns old fashioned unchallenged values proving that "When you become a teacher by your pupils you'll be taught." The era of AIDS and Act Up is far different from anything that Crisp ever saw, and indeed, this does show the cold pretentious side of the scene that is rarely dealt with honestly in movies. Not a great movie, but it enlightening one with Hurt pregnant again the second time around, and a reminder that while we do not have a perfect world, it's the only world we've got so we're going to make the best of it.