Primly neat around its edges and scruffily potent at its center, Irwin Winkler's new film DE-LOVELY seems metaphorically matched to its subject, the legendary composer Cole Porter. A debonair sophisticate in the golden eras of Broadway and Hollywood, Porter's upper-crust propriety contrasted sharply with his ravenous sexual desires. It's a contrast ripe with dramatic possibility -- homosexual before homosexuality was possible as a life choice, Porter instead married his best friend and confidante, Linda. Although the couple was open about Cole's orientation throughout their marriage, the tension it caused wore heavily upon their relationship. That tension becomes the central drama of Winkler's film, but it casts a static defeatism over the Porters that reduce their complexity and individuality. Straining to pull its biographical events into the formula of a love story, DE-LOVELY is an intriguing but uneven film, at odds with itself. Such an original tale (told with theatrical gusto by screenwriter Jay Cocks) needs an original storyteller. Porter was an unconventional man, and Cocks' screenplay is an unconventional wonder; sadly for both men, Winkler is a very conventional director.

It would not surprise me if most audiences reject DE-LOVELY right out of the gate...and that would be a true shame, for despite its flaws the film has much to recommend it. DE-LOVELY begins in an empty theatre, where a shadowy presence named Gabe (Jonathan Pryce) takes the aged Cole Porter on a Dickensian journey back through his life. From the very beginning, this theatrical conceit is employed with stagy punnage by screenwriter Cocks; it is hammy, it is overdone, and it is sublimely dramatic in the tradition of Porter's own chosen genre, the stage musical. Indeed, as the "characters" of Porter's life appear singing an opening number, "Anything Goes" (one of thirty Porter classics that pepper the scenes), one can palpably feel the artifice. What DE-LOVELY does is upset the unspoken agreement between movies and movie audiences -- we will suspend our disbelief if you construct a believable enough cinematic reality. Here, there's little pretense. This is a movie where the scenery is constantly revealed to be nothing but scenery, where dissolves do not obscure or distance, but reveal. In a film about a man who projected one image to the world and lived another, Cocks has made the form of DE-LOVELY into a metaphor for the man. It is delightful, and delicious, and probably for most mass audiences, de-irritating. As Cole might have said, however...there's no accounting for taste.

DE-LOVELY fails itself most, however, when it tries to argue its central thesis: that Porter's story is a love story. Despite an intricate, affecting performance by Kevin Kline as Porter and a career-best effort by Ashley Judd as Linda, the details of their romance don't quite cut the mustard. On the one hand, DE-LOVELY argues for a re-evaluation of the concepts of fidelity, commitment, and passion in relationships; on the other, it indulges in a retrograde sexual prudishness that confounds its larger ideas. What we are left with is a pair of marvelously magnetic people, clearly connecting with one another...who slowly devolve into bitter priggishness. The tragic details of the Porters' later years are quite affecting, but the love they share for each other is not the stuff of Hollywood romance. (It shares a certain futility with the film Carrington, which also followed a woman and her not-heterosexual husband, but DE-LOVELY is not as sophisticated in exploring the issues of these relationships. The presence of Jonathan Pryce, who played Carrington in that film, leads one to believe that Winkler gets the connection as well.) Winkler's obsession with the Linda/Cole relationship is furthered underscored by the fact that there are no homosexual characters with major parts, despite biographical records to the contrary. If DE-LOVELY doesn't quite straighten Cole Porter out the way, say, Cary Grant did in Night and Day, it nevertheless makes the case that Porter's heterosexual relationships were primary, and that anything that happened with another man was by definition transitory and inconsequential.

Directorial issues aside, DE-LOVELY can be, at times, divinely entertaining. Chief among the pleasures is the immersion in Porter's vast songbook, which Cocks mines for metaphoric detail, mirroring the events of Porter's life with all-too-poignant lyrical touches. Kline (a Broadway-caliber singer who sings badly to impersonate Porter's wavering delivery) gives us heartbreaking renditions of "Easy To Love" and "So In Love", while Judd (who comes from a singing family, doncha know) gives body and soul to "In the Still of the Night." Throughout the film, modern pop stars take on the roles of cabaret and big band artists of yore, and they yield some gems, especially Robbie Williams' Sinatraesque version of the title song, Alanis Morissette's spunky first-audition-through-opening-night montage for "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)", and Vivian Green's tragic diva rendering of "Love For Sale." Few of the numbers fall completely flat, and only "Ev'rytime We Say Goodbye", tepidly performed by Natalie Crow, seems obvious and overbaked.

The performances are quite a pleasure as well. Kline, a versatile performer in any role, is at his best when exposing a character's layered personality; with Porter, he seems to have hit the jackpot. Linda Porter begins as a confident, sexy, charming power to be reckoned with; to Judd's credit, she finds beautiful poetry in the corrosive effects of self-doubt and confusion that scar Linda's later life. Small turns by Allan Corduner (Topsy-Turvy), Broadway veteran John Barrowman (Sunset Boulevard), and Keith Allen as Irving Berlin round out the Porters' universe with a resonate energy. Whether it is by accident or design, Tony Pierce-Roberts fuzzy cinematography doesn't lend the period atmosphere it might have, while Julie Monroe's choppy, sloppy editing constantly distracts.

Landing as it does here in America -- in the middle of the national debate on gay marriage -- DE-LOVELY may be viewed not merely as a historical biography but as an object lesson in the repercussions of the closet mentality. Despite the closely-held dreams of the radical right wing, it is impossible to change a person's orientation; Porter's inability to positively express his sexuality caused pain and suffering for everyone he loved. Had the world been a better, fuller, richer place -- a place that prized his wit and delicacy, but also prized his unconventionality -- who knows what he and Linda might have accomplished, unfettered by moralized strictures. Times have changed and we’ve often rewound the clock, said Porter in one of his most famous songs. While "anything goes" may still be a dream, DE-LOVELY, flawed as it is, makes a powerful argument for live and let live.

-- Gabriel Shanks

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