Rita Parker Sloan (Dynasty’s Linda Evans), a rich Republican and a big deal in Sandusky, Ohio, is dead.
Now all she needs is make-up and a hairdo.
She has, as her lawyer (Tom Bloom) explains, left a provision of some $25,000, for her estranged former hairdresser Pat Pitsenbarger (Udo Kier) to ensure she looks her best at her funeral. The trouble is, Pat is retired, has recently suffered from a stroke, and is busy trashing all the rules of the nursing home where he resides.
Setting aside their former differences, Pat busts out of the facility and sets off on a shuffling road trip in order “to make that bitch human”.
After all, as he confesses to a young gay man he encounters along the way, he “adored” that “demanding Republican monster”. Along the way he exchanges wistful witticisms with his old pal Eunice (Ira Hawkins) and he mourns and hallucinates his late partner, David (Eric Eisenbrey), who died with Aids, as he revisits the shared home he was not permitted to inherit. “At least it’s not that way any more,” says the new owner, hopefully,
Pat’s own fractured memory is mirrored by a changed landscape. “Nobody remembers me,” he tells the barman at his former local, which is just about to close forever. “I used to perform here. Every Saturday night.” That’s not entirely true. His former assistant turned rival, played by Jennifer Coolidge in one of the film’s most appealing scenes, is still embittered. And arguably the best scene in the film sees Mr Pat encounter a thrift store assistant (Stephanie McVay) who imagines that the “Liberace of Sandusky, Ohio” couldn’t possibly remember her. We won’t spoil the details of what follows.
Inspired by a real-life Sandusky, Ohio legend, writer-director Todd Stephens crafts an impeccable odyssey that ponders love, loss, and attitudinal changes. “I wouldn’t even know how to be gay any more,” Pat tells Eunice, almost despairingly.
The veteran Fassbinder collaborator Udo Kier, who over the past decade has essayed unforgettable turns in such disparate, essential movies as Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, The Painted Bird, and Bacarau, puts in a remarkable, possible career-best performance. Scene partners Coolidge, McVey and Shanessa Sweeney rise to the challenge.
Jackson Warner Lewis’s sunny cinematography confirms the mood: death is seldom so much fun.
