In 1930's Paris, soprano singer Victoria (Julie Andrews) is unable to find work. She bombs an audition at Chez Lui, a tawdry night club where aging gay diva Toddy (Robert Preston) works. The same evening Toddy starts a fight at Chez Lui with his soon-to-be ex-lover and is subsequently fired. Later that night, Victoria runs into Toddy at a Paris restaurant where she is scheming to plant a cockroach in her food in order to get her meal for free. The plan goes awry after the cockroach escapes, starting a riot in the restaurant which Victoria and Toddy use to escape into the rain-drenched Paris night. They spend the night at Toddy's apartment fighting colds and discussing how they got into their situations. The next day, Victoria dresses in Toddy's ex-boyfriend's clothes to return to her hotel and retrieve her belongings. However, Toddy's ex shows up to pick up his clothes and when he insults Toddy, Victoria breaks his nose and shouts at him. After seeing Victoria act like a man and dressed in man's clothing, Toddy hits upon a plan to help both her and himself earn a living: Victoria will pretend to be a man pretending to be a woman, and get a job as a female impersonator in a nightclub. In order to enhance the ruse, Toddy will pretend to be her gay lover. Soon Victoria's new persona, "Count Victor", becomes the toast of Paris. As money and fame start to turn their lives around, an additional complication arises. King Marchand (James Garner), a gangster, finds himself at first attracted to Victoria -- enraging his tiresome girlfriend, moll Norma (Lesley Ann Warren) -- until the end of the performance, when Victoria "reveals" herself as "Victor", to King's dismay and Moll's delight. Later that night at the hotel, King and Norma get into a fight and he ends up sending her home to Chicago where she cries in great detail to King's boss about how King Marchand left her for a man. Marchand starts to investigate Victor, sure that he could never fall for another man, but in the end King declares that he does not care and kisses Victoria, who comes clean. King's burly bodyguard Squash (Alex Karras) discovers King and Victoria in bed together and assumes that his boss is gay, which allows Squash to reveal his own homosexuality. Victoria realizes that she must come to terms with what she really wants out of life: to be true to herself by giving up her career and fame in Paris to be with the man who loves her and whom she loves, or to continue with her duplicitous profession and risk losing Marchand. Meanwhile, the owner of the Chez Lui club attempts to expose Victor as a fraud, suspecting "him" of being the soprano whom he rejected from his club earlier. A detective is hired to expose Victor. Across the ocean in Chicago, Norma tells King's gangster partner that he's gone gay, prompting the gangster to fly to Paris. While the pressures mount from outside, King faces his own insecurities as he keeps Victoria's secret at the cost of everyone believing him gay. Victoria finally removes King's tension by giving up her act and allowing Toddy to play Victor, which defeats the Chez Lui owner and King's gangster partner, who sees that the act is not what he was told.
I want to get my complaints out of the way because I have a lot of praise to heap on this movie. But it's not perfect. Like many Blake Edwards movies, Victor/Victoria suffers from Too Much Fun syndrome. Basically the audience (and undoubtedly the filmmaker) is having such a good time with the charming, funny characters and the charming, funny action that the plot suffers a LOT of wandering and weakness. There is no satisfactory ending to the plotlines of this movie. Conflicts are created and dealt with either far too easily (because they take away from the fun) or not at all (that ending.... woof....). Many of these conflicts are introduced late in the second act to boot. I enjoyed the hell out of the movie, but now that it's over I realize that I still have about a dozen unanswered questions and that kinda makes me mad at Blake Edwards. Fun is fun, but you don't have to break narrative structure to have a good time. As well, King is an odd choice of love interest. He's handsome and charming, certainly, but he's also a gangster, gruff, and at least initially something of a homophobe. I ended up liking him well enough by the end, but Victoria falls for him almost right away and I just didn't get it.
Now for the praise. I'm gonna start by going into a tiny bit of a rant. The humor in Victor/Victoria is somewhat farcical, somewhat slapstick, and largely verbal. It's a damn witty movie. And watching it I realized that I really miss wit in comedies. Contemporary comedies are so geared towards the extreme that we've lost touch with smarter verbal humor. Contemporary humor leans to the crass and absurd. Which is fine in limited doses, like anything. But that's ALL we get from mainstream comedy. That or weak romantic comedies. Or Sandler movies, if you can call those "comedy". If there's anyone out there reading this blog who can think of a top grossing comedy in the last year (or 5, or 10) that could be considered "witty", by all means correct me. Victor/Victoria is gut-busting hilarious and it does that in a way that's classy. The movie doesn't shy away from sexual humor or vulgarity when it's funny, but neither does it rely on that low humor for every chuckle. And while there are touches of the absurd here and there, this is no Tim & Eric staring at the screen in fake pimple makeup while Avid effects swirl in the background for ten minutes. It's balanced and witty and I laughed my ass off without feeling like I'd just given the finger to somebody or sat through Blake Edwards' oblique self in-joke (ie: everything I hate about Tim & Eric).
Humor aside, this film works because these are compelling characters who you want to watch every second. Toddy (or Gay Centauri as I thought of him a few times) walks the line of stereotype Queen precisely because he's so aware of that line. One gets the impression that he acts overtly gay because he just likes the act. He's a charmer and a rascal and brilliant with a one-liner comeback. My favorite characters in comedies are the characters with whip-smart comebacks. (Which is why I will forever and always have a huge crush on Kat Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You). Who couldn't relate to Victoria's financial woes? Her resolution to just go for it with the cockroach scheme and then later the Victor scheme is winning. This isn't a girl who weeps about her problems and lets them get the best of her. She has the necessary cry and then leaps into action. Like Toddy, Victoria's got some real zinger one-liners. The relationship between the two characters is greater even than the sum of their parts. Watching Victoria and Toddy play off each other in the comedy scenes AND in the quieter personal moments tugged at my heartstrings, which are easily tugged when it comes to male-female friendships. My best friend is a woman and there's something.... I dunno, different, about having a close friendship with a woman. Even if that relationship wasn't resonant with me personally it would still be a lot of fun to watch. Garner as King is interesting, though I took a while to warm up to him. Eventually you feel for the guy. He truly does give it his best shot with keeping Victoria's secret at the expense of his own masculine reputation. King could have ratted her out at any point but he didn't. I wasn't pleased by his overtly macho ways of dealing with his discomfort, but I understood and gave the guy a pass. The pleasant surprise came in the form of Squash, whose revelation of homosexuality was played somewhat for laughs but was also played for a genuine bit of drama. Squash makes some really insightful comments about homosexuality and the need for some men to overcompensate. And once he has allowed himself to be out, Squash wastes no time in sharing that aspect of his personality with his boss. He could have backslid once he found out about Victoria, but Squash maintains his courage. For his part, King was confused but admirably accepting of Squash's admission. As with Victoria and Toddy, King and Squash make a great duo that is better than the sum of its parts. There seems to be genuine warmth between the two men.
As always, here are the mid-movie thoughts:
- Ah, "Blake Edwards". I feel confident that I'll enjoy this one.
- Director of photog Dick Bush. Dick. Bush. Wow. That poor kid.
- Ah, good old Sugardaddy queens.
- hahaha... the old fat guy eating is so over the top and hilarious
- The creep hotel manager is awesome! Man, I have a feeling I'm going to really enjoy these ridiculous people.
- I just realized that Robert Preston is Centauri from Last Starfighter. I'm sure when people saw Last Starfighter they were like, "Holy shit, it's Robert Preston!" Me, I'm like, "Holy shit, it's Centauri!"
- hahahaha... this fucking waiter is AMAZING! Jesus, every scene has something funny in it...
- In a contemporary comedy we would have been IN the chaos instead of outside of it, which is much more effective. Contemporary comedies (and action movies, come to think of it) suffer the mistaken impression that we need to be inside every action that occurs in the plot. Sometimes it's more effective to witness the action from a distance.
- I like that the movie is building slow. It's just developing these characters, hovering near the plot.
- The advantage of a period drag movie is that the notion hadn't become so widespread. I didn't buy it in Connie & Carla that people would be suckered by the ruse because everyone's hip to drag. But in the early half of the 20th century people didn't know nearly as much and thus wouldn't be so quick to suspect. - Also, this movie is smart enough to CUT HER FREAKING HAIR!!! And bind her damn boobs!!! See, Connie & Carla could really have taken a lesson from this movie. Choose actresses who can sell the man part (sorry, Nia and Toni both have decent racks) and cut their freaking hair.
- The magician balancing gag is fantastic!
- Oh wow, John Rhys-Davies? "Sala, when did you get a nightclub?"
- Jesus, again, this is SO MUCH BETTER than Connie & Carla. Garner's character is doing a great job at disbelieving, which acts for the audience, but since we know he's a douche we're less inclined to care about the fact that it's really not that believable.
- Leslie Ann Warren as Norma is pretty hilarious, too. A little aggravating, but funny.
- Is Garner gonna be a sourpuss the whole movie? Jesus, dude, crack a smile.
- The soap in the mouth is hilarious. And the King-Squash reaction is just as great.
- I could do with a few less of the crowd reaction shots from Rhys-Davies and Preston.
- Dammit, she's clearly got cleavage. They should've addressed that. One thing that Connie & Carla does right is deal with the whole "our performance breasts are fake" issue.
- King is a douche. Why are we supposed to care if he ends up with Victoria?
- hahaha... nice, the wave gag pays off!
- "terrified heterosexuals". Amen, sister!
- The "You and Me" number is so damn charming...
- I can't tell if King knows and that's why he's so smugly smiling or if he's just playing charmed by the relationship between Preston and Andrews.
- Ah, the movie answered that question. And it's a wonderful answer.
- Squash is a great out of nowhere heroic character.
- There's a half hour left in this movie and I have no idea where it's headed. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed it, but I also feel like this last half hour is going to be awfully messy and not that good.
- The two of them at the boxing match and opera is awfully sitcom-y.
- Oh shit! That hammer to the thumb gag looked unintentionally gruesome.
- Wait, what??? That doesn't resolve anything! What the hell kind of ending is that? Ugh, dammit Blake Edwards, you did it to me again!
Did the movie satisfy the theme? Yep. I'd say this was a much smarter way to deal with the whole plot device of woman-as-man-as-woman than the aforementioned Vardalos disaster.
Overall, I would highly recommend this movie to anyone looking for a good old-fashioned farce. It's witty, it's hilarious, and the characters are damn engaging. It's also a pretty good musical, though the numbers are limited to actual staged numbers only. I'd even say if you don't like musicals or farce but you DO like The Last Starfighter, there's something fascinating about watching Centauri as an old queen. Just be prepared to kinda hate the ending and not feel all that satisfied about the conflict. It's a hell of a lot of fun, it just could have benefited from a plot-conscious rewrite.
Okay, so I'm behind by two movies and a "Theme explanation" blog. I'll get at least one of those done by the end of the weekend, if not two. Seeya then!
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