Steven Soderbergh's apparently final film as director (for now?) displays all his strengths: an actors' director, the semi-documentary style that gives a high level of verisimilitude, complete control of shifting tone, and the utter ability to hold the viewer throughout. The double whammy of the already-familiar public story and a fairly standard tragic 70s/80s-AIDS/drugs/plastic surgery tale could have made this film perfunctory, but two absolutely superb nuanced performances by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and Richard LaGravenese’s warm, knowing, funny but emotionally honest script (based on Scott Thorson's accounts of his relationship with Liberace) raise the level of this biopic considerably. The stars are virtually inseparable on-screen for almost the whole running time, making the view of the relationship intimate and almost voyeuristic, but the film is also littered with small but hugely effective performances, such as Rob Lowe as an hilariously facially-immobile plastic surgeon. The finale - a bold and touching fantasy sequence seen through Thorson's eyes at Liberace's funeral - sums up the whole film by staying on the right side of kitsch and allowing the two fantastic leads to put across what Behind The Candelabra is all about - a love story, pure and simple.
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