Swan Song — Udo Kier spreads his wings as a madcap agent of camp

Would any actor inspire a better biopic than Udo Kier? Gifted with a laser gaze and flawless sense of deadpan, the hero could take us from broken postwar Cologne to swinging London, landing up in Hollywood blockbusters before a long residency on the wilder side of indie cinema. Supporting roles might include Andy Warhol, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (among many others). Until that film gets made, a fine alternative is Swan Song, a bittersweet lo-fi comedy of old age whose salute to assertive flamboyance is also that rare thing: the movie that really moves you.

Kier is Pat Pitsenbarger, a gay émigré in a grim US nursing home. The days are solitary, his partner David having died years before. Pat wears a look of disbelief and a sad grey tracksuit like a prison uniform. Soon enough he is on the lam, escaping for a lawless odyssey in downtown Sandusky, Ohio. Shoplifting is a talent. What little money Pat can muster goes on white wine. (Like his character, director Todd Stephens thrives on a tight budget.)

Yet there is also a mission. Pat was once a virtuoso beautician and hairdresser, and the last wish of a wealthy ex-client is that he make her ready for her funeral. Now on the occasion of her death, traces of the life Pat once lived here in Sandusky are revisited. Naturally, the tracksuit is swapped for something fabulous in green.

Pat is a madcap agent of camp. He is also the soul of a film of deep melancholy. Given that a central sequence takes place in a gay bar on drag night, it might seem crass to say the movie Swan Song most resembles is The Straight Story. But like David Lynch’s elegiac road movie, Stephens’ film has a pinpoint eye for the stuff of getting old. Memories feel more real than the present; a simple brand of cigarette has a whole personal history wrapped up in it. It is a treat all round, but impossible to picture without Kier in the lead: star power raging against the dying of the light to a defiant disco beat.

★★★★☆

In UK cinemas from June 10