Compared with "My Fair Lady", this film, also a drag comedy of the 1980s, is much less famous. In fact, the two films are very good-looking, comedy is very strong, indistinguishable.
The two films have something in common: both take place in the entertainment industry, the protagonists are desperate, and they both reach the pinnacle of life through cross-dressing. In the end, they all chose to end the camouflage and be their true self. At the 55th Academy Awards, both films received several nominations (9 for "My Fair Lady"; 6 for "Androgyny"), but only won one less important award ("My Fair Lady" gave Best Supporting Actress; "Androgyny" was the best song).
"Androgynous" director Blake Edwards (Blake Edwards) wife Julie Andrews (Julie Andrews) starred in the heroine, who would have thought that she was 47 years old when she was in her 30s at most, really reversed Grow!
Even if you haven't heard her name, you must know the old musical "The Sound of Music" (1965), which was her in the 1960s. After The Sound of Music, she went through a long period of silence, mainly due to the decline of Hollywood musicals and the fact that she still focused most of her energy on stage performances.
Twenty years later, Julie Andrews is still beautiful, and her voice is still bright, long, and memorable. In addition, she also starred in "Mary Poppins" (Mary Poppins, 1964), "Star!" (Star!, 1968) and other classic musicals. In 1995, she and her husband adapted "Androgyny" into a musical and put it on Broadway. Of course, she is still the absolute heroine. And this year, it has been 30 years since she last appeared on Broadway.
The story of "Androgynous" took place in Paris in the 1930s. With the invention of the sound film, the stage industry declined, and a large number of theater practitioners turned to movies. The sound film urgently needed a large number of girls who could sing and dance. People were eager for new faces, new voice. So in the story, the theaters went into decline one after another, and the heroine Victoria's husband, the owner of a small theater company, ran away with money. Victoria couldn't find a job, the stage was hungry for a personal, unconventional performer, and Victoria's voice and acting were too orthodox.
At one point, she was reduced to having sex with the landlord for meatballs...until she started dressing as a man. And the man she pretended to be had to dress up as a woman in turn to perform on stage. People would rather listen to a man sing a soprano than a real soprano . Is the end of the traditional theater still far behind?
The idea for the duality reversal was conceived by Victoria's gay man, old gay Toddy. What's special about this movie is that there are so many good... gays . Let's count: Toddy, Toddy's ex-boyfriend (the guy who was punched by Victoria, and he appeared again later); the bodyguard of the male protagonist, the king of Machang (the bodyguard thought the boss was gay); the boxer ( King Marchand provoked it and was beaten); the male dancers who were obviously gay; the major shareholder Sal, a guess, not explicitly stated, but he is particularly homophobic and indifferent to XX's sexually provocative dances .
You'll find that the show business scene in Paris is nothing short of a gay haven . There are gay dance halls; Tody bluntly and pun in the nightclub singing Gapari is Gay, the camera is on a couple of female spectators in the nightclub who are clearly Lesbian; He and Victor are a pair of lovers, and the two go out and eat and live together justifiably.
The film is about disguise, there are women disguised as men, gays disguised as straight. King Marchand is also pretending. There is a scene where King Marchand and Victoria are talking about their future. King Marchang complains that Victoria's disguise will make them look like a gay couple, and Victoria responds: "Don't talk about doing business with gangsters. , and pretending I'm not a gangster, sounds a lot like what I do in my line of work. I think you and I are wearing masks."
In the 1920s, most nightclubs in the United States were controlled by gangsters, so the French took it for granted that King Marchand with a bodyguard was the boss of the gang, but in fact he was a legitimate businessman. At that time in the United States, if you didn't pretend to be a gangster, it was difficult to gain an advantage in the business field, so King Ma Shang could only pretend to be a gangster who pretended to be doing legitimate business. To a certain extent, the situation of the Kings of Marchand and Victoria is very similar.
Yet again, the film is about candor. The characters in the play are surprisingly gentle and tolerant towards homosexuality, and surprisingly frank and sincere towards love (whether same-sex or opposite-sex).
Victoria had the first conversation with the male Gay and the king of Marchand. Gay honey said that he might fall in love with him, and Victoria responded: Me too.
When the straight man Ma Shang Dawang found out that he fell in love with a gay, he tried every means to get close to him (her), not away from him (her). In a later scene, he and Victoria escaped from the dance hall in the scuffle and found themselves in a dark alley. "Even if you are a man, I don't care." Ma Shang said and put his lips on it. King Marchand's lover, Norma, only regretted knowing that Toddy was gay, "But you are so charming, what a waste!"
The only person in the show who is uncomfortable with being gay is King Marchand, who is a homophobic and chauvinist, who refuses to believe that Victoria, who shines on stage, is a man, and feels that being gay is unnatural. So the director made him suffer a lot: his sweetheart was unwilling to give up his cross-dressing career and acting career, so he had to dress up as a pair of gay men with Victoria, and dance only in gay dance halls. This bruised his masculinity, so he deliberately went to a shabby pub to order milk, in order to provoke those rough men who were not fond of alcohol, the result was a fight and some self-esteem was recovered.
The bodyguard who has been with him for many years is very masculine (and shares a suite with him), but he is gay, and what is even worse is that the bodyguard finds himself and Victoria sleeping in the same bed. The bodyguard who learned the "truth" was moved to tears: "If you can admit that you are gay, then of course I can too."
The jokes in the film revolve around sexual inversion and homosexuality. King Marchand was very surprised that the bodyguard was gay, "You are a complete American, and I have never seen an American football player more powerful and rude than you in my life." "If you don't want to be called Glass, you will naturally become A tough, rambunctious American football player."
Sal, the major shareholder, thought that Ma Shang was also gay, "Oh my God, Ma Shang, you are a complete man, but we have grown up together since we were young." Ma Shang deliberately said, "This may be the problem."
Victoria's remarks shed light on the injustice of women in society: "I think all this is wonderful, what I can get as a man, I can never experience as a woman in my life, I am liberated, I can be my own Master." No wonder she was reluctant to give up her male identity in the face of love.
There is no such genuine and charming sex comedy anymore. Ambiguous gender and homosexuality seem to have become a fashionable thing, and people only care about consuming it and rarely think about the essence of the phenomenon.
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