Well polished and with career best performances by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, Liberace’s crystal candelabra illuminates the screen, but doesn’t hide much behind its glimmer.

At the beginning of the film Scott Thorson (who would later become Liberace’s lover) explains how it’s strange that mainstream audiences, especially women adored Liberace, even though he was gay. ‘They have no idea he’s gay’ his friend says, and opens our eyes to a strange reality. In the mid 70’s, the flamboyant persona of the eccentric piano virtuoso known as Liberace, the talented man with the regal wardrobe, was so overwhelming, his brand of glitter blinded the audience to the obvious. Liberace presented himself as a larger than life royal caricature of himself as the artist. He was the product of a puritan age and never admitted his sexual preference publicly. He had even sued newspapers that had implied as much for libel, but spent most of his free time chasing after his young blonde lovers, regardless. He would fall in love with them passionately and turn them into princes in his extravagant palace, He would undress them in his Jacuzzi, and later dress them up in gold.

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Returning to Italy after ‘This Must Be The Place’, Sorrentino creates his own ‘Dolce Vita’, in a movie that celebrates the beauty of simplicity.

Jep is a stylish and phlegmatic 65 year-old man, charming and still loveable, a successful author of just one book, a well-known journalist and socialite. He lives in Rome, and when we say ‘lives’ we mean ‘to the fullest’. He likes to walk around his hometown with its great history, bathed in the summer sun. He comes and goes as he pleases. Sometimes he enters the wonderful houses of art buyers and opinion makers. Other times he passes his time at an old friend’s strip joint. He goes to parties that last until dawn and is the perfect host when entertaining friends at his own house, which is situated right next to the Colosseum. He’s a bon viveur, a friend of the arts and of those that create, sell or write about them.However, he’s also a man in the twilight of his life, who feels the constraint and pressure of time, and the need to assess his life’s experiences.

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