
Was it just me or was there something desperate about Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno?
Baron Cohen and his producers devised mis-en-scène after mis-en-scène to entrap the squeamish and the homophobic (and I don't think they're automatically the same thing--the movie was as much about our fear of sex and eccentricity as it was about homosexuality). But his chosen victims were, for the most part, so controlled, so on message, so "I'm out of here as fast as I possibly can?" that he only managed to squeeze a few brief moments of discomfort out of each of them.
I mean, the setup for Congressman Ron Paul was spectacular--the hotel room, the champagne, the photos, the disappearing act with the pants--but the man did get out of there in the least embarrassing way possible. It was all build, build, build--then the person fled or, like the hunters out camping, turned silent and uncooperative, cinematically speaking.
(Which may be why so much of the movie felt set-up--the spider couldn't attract enough flies into his web. Possible exceptions: Paula Abdul taking about human rights work while, ahem, sitting on a person and the penultimate set piece, where the grudge-match fans cheered on the violence but freaked out on the same-sex kissing. But then, as if to offer an anecdote to all the hate of that scene, Brüno sings a song with celebrities he should be deflating, a set-up that had obviously been negotiated and constructed, which retroactively makes you reevaluate all the "real" incidents you've already seen.)
To fill up the holes in running time, the "plot" was pushed to the forefront with many scenes of Baron Cohen "acting" rather than "intervening." But without an audience, Baron Cohen's flamey performance is something a drag queen would do at home in front of the mirror: overwrought, self-indulgent and self-congratulatory but deeply unconvincing. When people complain that the move made them squirm, I wonder if it's Baron Cohen's interpretation of Brüno, rather than the world around him, that made them feel that way. Who'd want to watch a scripted movie performed this way? I blame the bad acting, though it could be that some audience members have not spent enough time in the underbelly of the gay world in order to set their flamboyancy meters to appropriate tolerance levels.
Even as a stereotype, Baron Cohen was one-note. Where was the defeat, the sliding of the mask in the face of the humiliation of "failing" in Hollywood? Where were the tantrums, the acting out? It's true that gay men construct studier and more ostentatious public personae than others, but it's also true that these constructions frequently falls apart. In this, Baron Cohen was very much a straight man putting on "gay face," afraid to deviate too far from his shtick for fear of striking a wrong note and alienating gay and gay-friendly audiences.
Part of the problem, I suppose, is the success of Borat. And I suppose reality TV shows in general. Even if people don't know it's Baron Cohen, they see the cameras, imagine a scenario where they will be humiliated and pull back.
Success seems to have made Baron Cohen pull back, too. It's the worst mistake a satirist can make: wanting people to like you. You can unflatteringly impersonate a Kazakhstani journalist without ever winking at the audience, because, I'm pretty sure, Kazakhstanis don't buy a lot of movie tickets. Who cares if you hurt their feelings? But the queers--cross them and they can bring you down. With Brüno Baron Cohen has tried to have it both ways--social criticism and conciliation. They are not compatible modes of expression.
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