As I demonstrated recently, my knowledge of so-called higher culture is pretty shaky. I’m especially ignorant when it comes to music, at least of the pre-rock ‘n’ roll variety. To me, “The Great American Songbook” and “Tin Pan Alley” are vaguely understood terms at best, and up until a couple of weeks ago the only Cole Porter tune I could name was “Anything Goes,” and that’s only because I’ve seen the opening credits of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom so many times.
But then I saw De-Lovely, an unconventional biographical picture about Porter, and I realized that I do, in fact, know quite a few of the popular songs from the first half of the 20th Century. I’ve heard them for years in movies both new and old, and I think it’s fair to say that they are woven into the fabric of our cultural consciousness; in other words, everybody knows these songs, even if their origins are cloudy these days. (I’m personally quite fond of “Begin the Beguine,” which I knew from the film The Rocketeer, and from a CD collection of Big Band music I picked up a few years ago, but I never realized it had been written by Porter.) De-Lovely is filled with Porter’s music, performed by modern-day singers such as Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Alanis Morisette, and others whose faces I recognize but whose names I escape me. The film actually is a sort of musical, although the songs are used more to punctuate a given scene’s emotional impact than to drive the action or reveal information, as they do in a more traditional musical. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

De-Lovely begins with an aged Cole Porter, absently tinkling away at his piano. It’s evening, Porter is alone, and the mood is melancholy. An urbane-looking man enters the room and the two of them exchange a few words. Porter seems to know this man, although the audience hasn’t had the pleasure. Suddenly the two of them are sitting in a theater and a mass of people are dancing and singing on stage, or coming out into the audience in pairs and small groups to shake the hand of the delighted old man. The sequence is disorienting and, so far, the movie doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Then a lone woman comes onto the stage. The chaos stops, all eyes turn to her, and Porter remarks, with the wistfulness of an old man that has a lot of regrets about the way he treated his wife, on how beautiful she was. Now everything is clear. The people on stage are from Porter’s past, the man alongside him is apparently the Angel of Death come to collect the ancient composer, and this big stage sequence is Porter’s life passing before his eyes.

From this point, the movie proceeds in a more straight-forward bio-pic fashion, with scenes that bullet-point the big events of the subject’s life and a linear chronology that plays no further tricks with the audience, aside from occasional returns to Old Porter sitting in the theater and commenting on the action. Porter is played by Kevin Kline, an always-interesting actor who is absolutely perfect for this role. He’s suave and witty, a bit of a dandy, and he has the emotional range to convincingly travel through some forty years of increasing heartbreak and cynicism. (He has some assistance from the most remarkably realistic old-age make-up I’ve ever seen, but the feelings come from within, not from the latex.) Kline seems to have an old-fashioned quality about him; he fits the mileau of the early-20th Century far better than most modern actors would. He was a stand-out as Douglas Fairbanks in Chaplin, and if Hollywood ever decides to do an Errol Flynn-style version of Robin Hood, or even a bio-pic of Flynn himself, I can think of no one else I’d rather see in the part.

The movie belongs to Kline, but he is ably matched by Ashley Judd as Porter’s long suffering wife, Linda. To be honest, Judd has never done much for me. She has a pretty face and is obviously an intelligent woman, but a resume full of dark mystery-thrillers hasn’t given her a chance to show much acting ability. De-Lovely does, and she rises to the occasion beautifully. Like Kline, she realistically ages and evolves, conveying the effect of accumulated hurts without ever becoming maudlin.

I was far less impressed with the musical performances that form a major part of the film’s structure. I’m hardly qualified to intelligently critique such things, and lord knows I have no particular attachment to the historical recordings of these songs, but for me, as a casual and uninformed viewer, it was pretty distracting to have modern pop stars performing the old standards. Jazz chanteuse Diana Krall and popster Sheryl Crow seemed comfortable enough working in the style of the 1930s and ’40, but others really seemed out of their element. Elvis Costello looked stiff as hell in front of a swing band, and wavery-voiced Alanis — whose success as a recording star frankly baffles me — made my teeth hurt with her rendition of “Let’s Fall In Love.” Um, no, let’s not…

More problematic, however, was the script, which acknowledges that Porter was gay, or at least bi-sexual — Kline is quite fearless about kissing other men on-screen, by the way — but shies away from really exploring that aspect of his character or why Linda put up with it for so long. There are some wryly amusing lines in the beginning of their relationship that could’ve been written by Noel Coward, and she throws a tantrum later on in the film after their arrangement becomes intolerable, but I never really understood what made her tick. Perhaps that is a failing of the bio-pic genre, though; a lot of stuff gets glossed over in the interest of condensing decades into two hours.

I also wasn’t too keen on the “life as a musical” device, which I found needlessly distracting and difficult to access. In addition, the whole film had a sort of theatrical tone to it, as if it were written for the stage. I guess that’s appropriate, given the subject matter, but it gave the movie a sense of confinement, as if all the action were taking place in one or two rooms.

Still, the performances pulled me in, and I did care enough about Cole and Linda to shed a few tears at the film’s conclusion. For that reason alone, I’m going to recommend the film, with the caveat that it’s probably not going to appeal to everybody. If you’re interested in Porter or this period of history, or just in seeing some really fine performances, check it out, but be aware that it’s not a perfect film-going experience.