Swan Song

By: gbelly

By: Amos Lassen

"SWAN SONG"

One Last Job

Amos Lassen

Pat (Udo Keir), an elderly hairdresser decides to take on one last job and this sets in motion an unexpected journey into his past and the regrets he has tried to forget. The film is an elegy for a generation of gay men and women devastated by AIDS and intolerance. writer-director Todd Stephens brings us an emotional look at who we are in "Swan Song".

Set in the small town of Sandusky, Ohio, the picture opens in a nursing home, where Pat appears to be content to the rest of his life away. When asked to do some work on Rita Parker Sloan (Linda Evans), a longtime client who has just died, he is resistant at first, but he can't turn down the big payoff associated with making her look gorgeous for her funeral. He breaks out of the home, picks up beauty supplies and visits the grave of his deceased partner David.



Throughout much of the picture, Pat is surrounded by straight characters, and although American society isn't as bigoted as it was in his youth, Kier shows how the hairdresser remains guarded, only referring to David (who died from AIDS) as "my friend".

The world outside of the nursing home is rapidly changing. The longtime gay bar where he used to dance is being turned into a trendy brewery and most of the local businesses are gone. Wherever Pat looks, he either bumps into former clients who were personally impacted by him or finds a welcoming society for young gay men and women. Now, at the end of his days, Pat sees the better world that he helped create without even knowing it but he's too old to fully enjoy this new reality.

Now With much of LGBTQ life depending on hook-up apps or becoming domestic the small-town gay bar has largely disappeared along with the gay men who defiantly led the pride parade before there actually was one. From the minute Pat steps outside the home, we get a sense of place, a pretty rural Midwestern picture that seems unchanged by time. Pat puts on the one remaining bejeweled pinky ring he saved among his meager possessions and becomes more alive. We see this in his sassy attitude in an exchange with a convenience store clerk. From his conversations, we learn of the financial difficulties that cost him his home and his business after losing his partner. The visit to the churchyard cemetery where David is buried shows that Pat's wounds are still raw.

His return to the downtown area reminds him of his bad relationship with his former assistant Dee Dee Dale (Jennifer Coolidge) who opened a shop across the street from him. But the deeper conflict is the hurt inflicted by Rita, who revealed the stark difference between being a loyal customer and a friend at a time when he needed her most.



The sweetest scene is in a thrift-store makeover during which the owner, Sue (Stephanie McVay), produces a special outfit she's been saving and Pat surprises her by remembering every detail of her one visit to his salon..

Stephens explores gay life of the past and present. The young bartender, Gabriel (Thom Hilton), is oblivious to much of the place's history, while drag artist Miss Velma (Justin Lonesome) is just a walking cry for help on a bad hair day. There is sincerity here in the story of a man reflecting with both introspection and irreverence on who will remember him and how.

Dressed like something between Liberace and Quentin Crisp, "Mister Pat" - who was in fact a real person - took care of the socialites of straight-laced Sandusky by day. In his off hours, he entertained at the local gay bar, the Universal Fruit and Nut Company and was comfortable with his queerness .

At first, this seems to be a black comedy but it soon becomes an emotional look at the queer past. In this story of "a forgotten legend who's still capable of bending strangers to his will", we find a very special movie.