BRATTLEBORO — When a new Scottish actor appeared on the scene many years ago, I took note. This was no Sean Connery or Ewan McGregor, but a strange creature, mercurial in the extreme.
I watched Alan Cumming through the years, in films and television, in everything from Julie Taymor's Titus to the current CBS production of The Good Wife. He just finished the National Theatre of Scotland's one-man show of Macbeth, and his face is now familiar to countless Americans as host of PBS's Masterpiece Mystery.
Alan Cumming will grace the big screen in the Brattleboro Film Festival in a quieter indie movie, Any Day Now. For his role in the film, he has just received Best Actor Award both at Outfest in Los Angeles and at the Seattle International Film Festival. The movie has picked up audience awards at every festival where it has been shown.
Any Day Now, directed and co-written by Travis Fine, can be summed up as a drama about a gay couple fighting to adopt a Down Syndrome–afflicted teen in 1979 Los Angeles.
This description hardly begins to do the film justice, and it's not just the creative elements of the film that could be praised individually, but the way it all comes together to form a haunting and intelligent period drama.
Better yet, this is not a pseudo-historical movie with the sole intent of inflaming passions about current events. It is a self-contained work, one that very effectively evokes the pervasive, dark atmosphere of homophobia and discrimination of the time.
And yet, because of the artistry of the film, it does inflame current passions.
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The well-designed plot follows two primary stories: one the coming together of two lovers, Rudy (Cumming) and Paul (Garret Dillahunt) from opposite ends of the openly-gay-to-acting-straight/flamboyant-drag-queen-to-three-piece-polyester-suited-lawyer spectrums.
At the same time, this odd (yet not-uncommon for the times) romance is being played out in the ever-more-threatening crucible of homophobia, as Rudy witnesses the neglect of a teenage boy, the gentle Marco.
Levya plays Marco with integrity and a quiet strength, the calm center of a brewing storm. When the mother abandons the boy, Rudy takes him in.
A loving bond of trust and care is formed, forcing decisions on the key players, drawing the attorney-lover Paul into the mix as well. Complications will arise in such a situation, and the evolving plot pulls in a cast of intriguing characters. Be they suspicious and sinister, or well-meaning yet trapped in the culture, by the time attempts at adoption move into the court, the writing is on the wall.
And the ending is tough to bear, yet entirely plausible. All the main characters are utterly changed by the end, in ways they never could have foreseen.
In a couple of places, the plot could have been better developed. Given the life-changing decision made by the two lovers, the chemistry between them seemed overly subdued, their love life played down, as if that old chestnut had been pulled out of the fire: that lusty gay sex and good parenting cannot coexist comfortably in the common imagination.
Regardless, the plot held easily together and moved towards its concluding vortex with an inexorable pull.
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But back to those inflamed passions, which are not of the sexual variety.
Alan Cumming writes about Any Day Now: “I was immediately drawn to this incredible story. It really is a beautiful one and confounds your expectations and challenges your prejudices about what a family means.“
“I was also keen to do the film because I am sad to say that things haven't really changed all that much for same-sex couples in the arena of adoptions since the film was set. There are certain states where it is possible, but in most it is still utterly impossible to do without going elsewhere, usually abroad, or through surrogacy.
“So the activist in me and the artist in me were both conjoined in perfect harmony in the character of Rudy Donatello.”
Cumming was very recently invited to become a member of the Family Equality Council's Board of Advocates, for his role as Rudy in Any Day Now. The Family Equality Council is America's foremost advocate for LGBT family equality, working to ensure equal rights for the one million LGBT parents and their children in the U.S.
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The Canadian film Cloudburst, directed by Thom Fitzgerald, also deals with issues facing LGBT families.
In this instance, two elderly lesbians, Stella and Dot (Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, both Academy Award–winning actors), flee to Canada from Maine, after the blind Dot is tricked by her daughter into giving up her power of attorney and is placed in a nursing home. Stella has no say in the matter.
Thus a 30-year old romance threatens to come to a sorrowful end, but the love of the two women will not be denied.
In a hilarious scene, one of many, Stella rescues Dot from the home. In trying to figure out how to avoid the catastrophe happening again, they decide to drive to Canada and legal marriage. (“Then no one can separate us.”) They take to the road, picking up a hitchhiker named Prentice (Ryan Doucette), who moves into the circle of their affection.
Cloudburst is equal parts sentimental and funny, quite beautifully shot on Nova Scotia's coast. Although it also won a bundle of awards (I stopped counting after 12) - including second place for Best Actress for Dukakis at the Seattle International Film Festival, as counterpoint to Alan Cumming's same for Best Actor - it is a very different film from Any Day Now.
The gentle and luminous Dot yearns for the sea, which evokes in her the calm contemplation of eternity. This is her destiny, as we begin to suspect, and it is accompanied every step of the way by the no-nonsense, butchy, tough-talking, hard-drinking, and swearing Stella.
Dukakis manages, through humor, surprising wisdom, and heartfelt affection, to convey the crotchety old dyke with a heart of gold without falling into a caricature, a credit to her acting, and to the directing of Fitzgerald, who had worked with her on previous films.
The love between Stella and Dot is depicted with unabashed fervor, especially moving during a rainy scene when all passions of love and loss are laid bare, or playfully, in imaginative and slightly outrageous fun. There is never a discordant acting note in their affection.
The slapstick, on the other hand, came close to spoiling the balance of the film, but it was so funny all was forgiven.
Though some side plots were stretching things for the sake of humor, and though the last lines in the film were needlessly a bit lame, the grand highway adventure that is Cloudburst forgives these quibbles. Received in the generous spirit in which it was created, it takes the audience on the age-old journey of the power of love to win through adversity, conveyed in the new guise of the ever-more common situation in which older gays and lesbians are finding themselves.
As was the case with Any Day Now, Cloudburst is more than the sum of its enjoyable parts, as a strong depiction of the ongoing difficulties that same-sex couples face with the lack of partner benefits and end-of-life decisions.
Dukakis sums it up in a recent interview with The Desert Sun: “Thom [Fitzgerald] wanted people to know what it means to have no legal connection to the person you love. It's a very important part of the story.”