One would think that anyone embarking upon a followup to the groundbreaking Naked Civil Servant of 30-plus years ago would at the very least try to honor the original with some kind of inspired vision, but no. Here we have a sort of biopic of one of the most stylish people of the late 20th century that itself boasts no style whatsoever. True, the filmmakers have assembled some outstanding actors - and handed them a chipped mug of drab gruel to work with. Everything in the infrastructure of this film is wrong, starting with the script, which is another one of those TV-movie condensations of great lives wherein every other line is a "famous quote" by the subject and every other scene is an in-your-face introduction to the next pivotal character in the subject's life. We get Swoozie Kurtz as a PR maven who promotes Crisp as a stateside entertainer; Denis O'Hare as the editor of a gay periodical who hires Crisp as film reviewer, becomes somewhat alienated from him when he appears indifferent to the passions of 80's AIDS activists, and then returns to the fold as a compassionate friend of the dying octogenarian; Jonathan Tucker (in a fine performance) as a shy, insecure painter of gay-themed canvases who is befriended by Crisp; and finally Cynthia Nixon as performance artist and Woman-About-Bohemia Penny Arcade who, intrigued by Crisp's persona, offers him a spot in her traveling cabaret act. Nixon is a persuasive and gifted performer but is given no chance by the script to embody the down-to-earth and streetwise Arcade. Crisp spent the last 20 years of his life in a one-room flat in an old tenement building in Manhattan's East Village. He famously said that he never cleaned because "after a few years the dust doesn't get any worse," or something like that. But looking at the depiction of that flat in this film you'd never get the flavor of that dustiness. He frequented a local coffee shop on a busy avenue and would be seen pretty much each day of the week sipping tea and watching the world go by. In this film we get a diner that looks like something on 12th Avenue by the Hudson River. Most of the "streets of New York" scenes have a sterile, unreal look with no sense of the period.
The soul of this film is the great John Hurt in the title role. After nearly 35 years he can still grasp the essence of this peculiar post-Edwardian Englishman and put it across to third millennarians. His every line, every gesture is exquisite. In the later scenes he even modulates his vocal projection to suit that of a person whose life is winding down toward death. Crisp wrote shortly before he left this realm that when one grows very, very old one's skin takes on the character of a smelly overcoat that cannot be removed and one longs for death. One senses that feeling in Hurt's performance. So, for him and him alone this film is worth a look.
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