Simply put, Swan Song is the most heartwarming film I have seen come out this year, and the greatest Udo Kier role/performance I've ever seen by a long shot. Though all film fans should know Udo Kier, since he's been appearing in things nonstop since the 60's, this is the perfect time to get to know him if you don't already. I came across this one on streaming (Hulu) with a friend and we are both so immensely glad we noticed it and decided to give it a chance. It's one of the my favorite movies of 2021.

The plot is a bit like The Peanut Butter Falcon, another fantastic heartwarming movie from a couple years back. Udo plays a regionally infamous stylist who's been rotting away in an old folks home, but upon a request to style an old client for her funeral, he decides to ditch the retirement community and go on a mission to acquire his old favorite products, in order to do the best possible job he can with his old friend's corpse!

Precious dark comedy, through and through. Never a dull moment. There are a few cast members and conversations that are a bit off-putting and pull you out of the movie a bit with their amateurish presence, but that aside this is a near-masterpiece for anyone can appreciate the sub-genre. It's really just entirely hilarious and endearing! Perhaps we need more movies about old people...and maybe more specifically, old gay men! So refreshing and fantastic.

Udo Kier gives an oddly muffled performance as a retired hairdresser in Ohio--once called "the Liberace of Sandusky"--who is now wasting away in a nursing home; he's offered the opportunity to do the hair of a wealthy former client (and former friend) who recently passed away and requested his services in her will. When writer-director Todd Stephens isn't being 'artistic' with the occasional slow-motion effect, he delights in being facetious in a most annoying way with his narrative (as with a long conversation between the hairdresser and a friend from the good old days that turns out to be a daydream). Almost all the performances are uneven or overworked, while Stephens' dialogue is dotted with sadly ironic little truths meant to get us in the gut. Kier has a lovely moment hugging the gravestone of his lover, and one more talking to the deceased woman's grandson about the parties she gave that he never came to, but that's it. The characters on Mr. Pat's journey (particularly a group of women in an all-black beauty shop and a young gay bartender in a backwards baseball hat) are an unreal lot, while the humor and most of the sentiment feels fraudulent. Those shots of Kier shuffling down the sidewalk in a mint-green pantsuit and velvet chapeau are great for trailers and teasers, but there's nothing going on underneath these images for us to attach our emotions to. Mr. Pat, who has a fetish for folding napkins and packets--and is, at best, lethargically snappy when the spirit moves him--is meant to be a leftover from the old school, but he's more like a refugee from another country. I don't know whether Stephens' depiction of a nursing home as a deathtrap is meant to trigger our collective fears of growing old and useless or to serve as a springboard for hope once our protagonist walks out the door. It may be neither: the whole old folks' home opener is a con-job, anyway, with Stephens using it merely to press our buttons. A mess! * from ****

DVD lacked subtitles for the elderly, disabled, hearing impaired, and ESL viewers. Disrespectful & cheap on the part of the producers especially when audio & enunciation is poor thus a lower rating.

Opening credit, "Inspired by a true icon." The story of Patrick Pitsenbarger a Sandusky, OH gay hairdresser now retired will he perform one final client makeover (Rita Parker Sloan)? Well acted; well written.