Review of Velvet Goldmine (1998) by Daniel P — 30 Sep 2012

It doesn't take a genius to piece this alternate history together: Curt Wild = Iggy Pop, Brian Slade = David Bowie and Jack Fairy = Lou Reed. But if this is a biopic, it's a capital-Q Queer one, which I mean in the academic sense, playing with the performed identities of these performers, hyper-exaggerated as they would have been in the heyday of Glam Rock.

While staying mostly in the past - recollected sequences coming through interviews performed by a journalist (Christian Bale) - the film's "present" is also intriguing, as we see Bale's character relive his coming of age and his struggle with the realization that he is gay, and we see how his obsession with the music and performers of the day opened the door. By exaggerating the performed identity, the moderate version (i.e., merely being gay and not straight) begins to appear to be a tenable position, and the music inspires a new confidence in our hero - even though the ambivalent, "anything goes" approach to sex, drugs and rock and roll had varyingly destructive side-effects for the performers. An eye-opening early film from Todd Haynes that plays in the same way that his later Dylan flick, I'm Not There, did, and a visually lush and viscerally challenging movie, a gem that was overlooked in those bubblegum late 90s, Provocative work.