There is a big difference between the two films, however: Hector Babenco’s 1985 Oscar-winning drama, based on Manuel Puig’s novel, was placed in an interesting political context, whereas scripter Schumacher situates the relationship in a routine, uninvolving crime melodrama concerning some missing money. In its contrast of a “man’s man” and a wild drag queen, “Flawless” is as schematic as “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” in which a macho political activist and a gay window-dresser found themselves locked together in a prison cell. Thus begins a rather stormy relationship - and a moral odyssey - of two individuals who could not be more different. Nonetheless, under pressure, Walt reluctantly agrees to a rehabilitative program that includes singing lessons from Rusty. A stubborn man, he refuses to leave his apartment for physical therapy, despite persistent demands from his doctor. Trying to help his neighbor, Walt is injured and suffers a stroke, which partially paralyzes him. Late one night, Walt hears a heated argument and gun shots coming from Rusty’s apartment. Sporting red hair and wearing heavy makeup and big, colorful tops, Rusty walks around his shiny apartment, dispensing the kind of wisdom one associates with transvestites and dreaming of a sex-change operation. Rusty (Hoffman), Walt’s upstairs neighbor, is a street-smart drag queen who functions as mother hen to a whole entourage of cross-dressers. Walt frequents a dance hall where he tangos with beautiful Karen (Wanda De Jesus), who exploits him, and is courted, initially without much luck, by a younger, more sincere woman, Tia (Daphne Rubin-Vega). A glance at his apartment reveals photos of his highly decorated past, particularly of his heroic effort some years earlier in saving hostages during a bank holdup. ![]() Mostly set within a racially diverse apartment complex on the Lower East Side, tale introduces retired security guard Walt Koontz (De Niro), a proud, ultra-conservative man who’s set in his ways. Unfortunately, this also proves to be one of the film’s main problems - in mores and sexual politics, pic is very much grounded in the zeitgeist of the post-Stonewall era, when a transvestite, such as the one played by Hoffman, could conceivably say, “I’m a woman trapped in the body of a man.” But it’s the kind of statement that’s outdated in the late ’90s, when the story is supposed to take place. ![]() A more personal and meaningful work than his previous efforts, “Flawless” takes Schumacher back to his New York roots of the 1960s and ’70s.
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