Review of Suddenly Last Summer (2012) by Andre D — 05 Mar 2015

Antonia bleedin' Quirke (UK's most irritatingly pretentious film critic) aside, this 1959 B&W OTT Camp Melodrama would get no more than 2 or 2 1/2 stars if it was made today. But starring Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Montgomery Clift, with director Joseph Mankiewicz and Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams as its writers, one tends to judge it more kindly, especially in its rightful context.

And you WILL need to read up on Williams' background, his fears and insecurities in order to understand what the story really means since you won't get the full picture purely from the film. I especially appreciate the way the film manages to court and skirt around very controversial subjects while the Production Code was in full force.

But no matter how you look at it, the film fails to break out from its theatrical origins, in particular the slow monologue-y first act drags, had it not been for Hepburn's hammy yet deliciously watchable performance channelling Joan Crawford as portrayed in Mommie Dearest as if she had cross-bred with Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd.

Clift is wooden throughout and Taylor, while beaming with beauty and youth, often come across as hysterical for the sake of it. Ironically, for a film which tried to tackle a subject matter that is so ahead of its times, the rest of it now feels rather dated.