![]() ![]() His characters, regardless of their sex or sexuality, are complete human beings, a quality denoted by their good humor. Edwards not only infuses Victor/Victoria with a light-as-a-feather tone, but allows the characters to be just as jokey, sarcastic, silly, and playful as any one of us might be. It’s one thing for a film to have a good sense of humor, but it is a greater triumph to write characters that have a good sense of humor. It’s a funny scene that shoots down ignorance in a rather sweet fashion. ![]() They then mutually refuse to give up on men. Toddy, without missing a beat, suggests that the right woman might also be able to reform her. She doesn’t quite understand why a man would want to be with a man, and makes an innocent suggestion that the right woman could “reform” him. Norma, a horny ditz, has a wonderful exchange with Toddy, perhaps the first gay man she’s met. And he’ll eventually come around to be a lot more accepting. There are frank discussions about what these people want, and the only one who ever looks uncomfortable is the straight guy. On the outs is King’s girlfriend Norma, played by Lesely Ann Warren, most certainly one of the film’s highlights.Īll of these characters have libidos, and they’re no afraid to talk about it. Victoria attracts the eye of an ultra-masculine audience member named King Marchand (James Garner full-blown charming cad mode) who, over the course of the film, has to start asking himself some serious questions about his own sexuality. She is equal to the challenge, although we, as an audience have to take for granted that Julie Andrews could pass for a man call it Twelfth Night Syndrome. That is: A woman impersonating a man impersonating a woman. Victor/Victoria, based on an obscure 1933 German film called Viktor und Viktoria, is about a young impoverished stage performer named Victoria (Julie Andrews) who is taken in by an energetic gay man named Toddy (a sublime Robert Preston) who comes upon the idea that she could find great success in a drag club, provided she impersonate a drag queen. Yes, these questions are important, but if – the film tonally argues – we just unwound ourselves a bit, and joyfully fell into bed with whomever we so pleased, then perhaps we could laugh off a great deal of the weight. It – casually – asks heady questions about gender, sexuality, misogyny, homophobia, and the damage that can be done by intellectual and sexual rigidity in these ideas, but it ultimately comes down on the side of taking it easy. But even compared to those sexual contemporaries, Victor/Victoria is infused with a unique lightness to its sexy material. Victor/Victoria is hardly a pioneer in this regard One can immediately conjure up 1972’s Cabaret for an even more vivid precedent, and some critics in the 1980s noted that Victor/Victoria owed much of its existence to the success of La Cage aux Folles a few years previous. Victor/Victoria, in contrast, presented sex as something zesty, active, open, and enjoyed by everyone. Previously, movie sex had been heavy, deliberately arousing, aggressive, masculine, constructed for the male gaze. And I recall that the sex in Victor/Victoria didn’t resemble the sex I had previously seen in action films and late-night cable-ready exploitation cheapies. ![]() ![]() It was the first musical I saw wherein people had sex. This is one of the first films I saw – at a tender young age – wherein I heard a character announce openly that they were horny. Here’s my central takeaway from Blake Edwards’ 1982 musical comedy Victor/Victoria (playing at the New Beverly on Friday and Saturday, December 15 th and 16 th): Sex is supposed to be fun. ![]()
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