MQFF Opening Night

For the first time in several years, the opening night film at the 17th Melbourne Queer Film Festival was actually pretty good. As I've been known to remark, generally the opening night party is more memorable than the film itself. This year, though, instead of an insipid crowd-pleaser such as But I'm a Cheerleader, the festival went with a much stronger film, the 'other Capote biopic', Infamous.

Like Capote, which earned Phillip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar, Infamous focuses on the life of writer and bon vivant Truman Capote (a delightful performance by 'the voice of Dobby the House Elf', Toby Jones - not as note-perfect as Hoffman's somehow lifeless impersonation but more vibrant as a consequence) at the time he was researching and writing his landmark work of literary non-fiction, In Cold Blood. I found Capote over-rated - although its lensing was superlative - and while I can't rave about Infamous, I definitely enjoyed it.

The films differ in that Infamous focuses much more on Capote as a gay man, and fleshing out his internal life and his top shelf New York lifestyle. Most significantly, the film gives significant weight to the relationship betweeen Capote and the death-row murderer Perry Smith (a sombre performance by Daniel Craig; physically miscast - the real Perry Smith was short and stocky - but nonetheless impressive) - going so far as to suggest that the two were in love, which results in a passionate jail-cell kiss between the two.

Fiction? Almost probably.

Good film? Almost.

Like Capote, the film looses strength in its final act, but until that point, it balances the breezy comedy of Capote's social life with his 'swans', the society ladies (played by a delightful Sigourney Weaver and others) who dote upon him, with the sombre truth of the crime he is investigating remarkably well. The scene where the writer first visits the farmhouse where the murders he is writing about took place is especially memorable and poignant.

It's lively, well-acted (save for a cameo by Gwyneth fucking Paltrow in the opening scenes which I loathed - but then, I loathe her) and both moving and amusing. As Capote's childhood friend and author Nelle Harper Lee, Sandra Bullock is remarkably strong and consistent; the constant observer of her friends foibles, faults and charms. Numerous scenes shot against the backdrop of Manhattan, allow Capote's friends and rivals - including a devilishly cutting Michael Panes as Gore Vidal - to comment directly on the action, a technique which works surprisingly well, and which appears to be a direct homage to the book by George Plimpton on which director Douglas McGrath based the movie.

Shame I had to leave the opening night party early though - damn these Friday morning meetings!