Flawless

Rusty Zimmerman (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is the kind of wide-hipped tobacco-scarred mother of all drag queens who is always at the center of drama. Whether it's shouting down her conservative working-class neighbor, Walter Koontz (Robert De Niro), or telling her gay Republican "sisters" where to take their plans for a homogenized Pride parade or talking back to a pair of drug dealing goons trying to strong arm her, Zimmerman comes from the take-no-shit school of drag. When the local drug kingpin is robbed, he hunts the thief down to the residential hotel where Zimmerman and Koontz live. Hearing the sound of gunfire coming from upstairs, Koontz, a former security guard, goes to investigate and has a stroke.

Koontz suffers partial paralysis and his doctor suggests that he take singing lessons as a form of speech therapy. He reluctantly approaches Zimmerman and the two enter into a fragile and sometimes volatile alliance. The charm of Flawless lies in the fragility that both these characters come to expose to one another. Koontz is an aging emotional cripple whose relationship with a local dance hall girl is painfully financial. Zimmerman is an impoverished artiste who hopes one day to be a woman. He has an abusive married boyfriend.

The film is really carried by DeNiro's and Hoffman's brilliant and frightening performances. But savvy viewers will also recognize several other legends prancing through the frame, including Joey Arias, Raven-O and Nashom Benjamin (who has also appeared in Tom Kalin's Swoon and Geoffrey Beene 30). Unfortunately, these characters are never as fully fleshed out as Koontz and Zimmerman and often the film degenerates into a low rent version of To Wong Foo . . ., desperately whining "Can't we all just get along?"

But the tensions between Koontz and Zimmerman outshadow any hackneyed moments. At the core of DeNiro's and Hoffman's performances is a dialectic that seems to be about much more than retrenching familiar notions of straight and gay. Rather than smoothing over conflict and difference with totalizing sameness, these two characters are locked in a struggle that is itself a kind of bond. Hoffman brings an edge to the Zimmerman character that distinguishes her from a mere entertainer. It is the kind of nerve that anyone familiar with Hoffman's roles in Boogie Nights and Happiness might expect of the skillful young actor.

--Lawrence Chua

Source : Obtained from PlanetOut.com