Word: foppishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...action," except for one chaste kiss, occurs offstage and is relayed to the audience as a Texas family's gossip. The play's teen-age sisters might be called Rosie and Gilda; they are as irrelevant to their small town's melodramas as Hamlet's foppish courtiers were to the royal carnage. Life is a soap opera they will be able to experience only vicariously...
Divided into two parts, the film first focuses on the eccentricity of the characters who have come to pay tribute to the fallen star. Vain opera celebrities upstage one another while rehearsing for Tatua's memorial concert, a foppish conductor reveals his obsession with the dead soprano while an English lord is cuckolded by a member of the ship's crew. The film moves without direction, as scene after scene of extravagant dinners and meaningless tete-a-tetes follow one another and avoids any serious character or plot development. Instead it concentrates upon painting a picture of the rich...
OTHER INTERPRETATIVE PROBLEMS also crop up, the heavy-handed treatment of sexuality, whether heterosexual or homosexual, at times insults the audience's sense of propriety Kevin Jennings as the foppish Autolycus is particularly confusing: appearing out of nowhere. Autolycus' frenzied gesticulations, night-clubbish singing of Shakespeare's brilliant poetry and sexual rapport with several characters seem unnecessary and purposeless...
...only exception is Finnegan's convincing and zany portrayal of the gay, foppish Algernon, who devours cucumber sandwiches, bread and butter and muffins with dainty relish while seriously maintaining, "When I am in great trouble I refuse everything but food and drink." His candid approach makes the most of other similarly ridiculous lines...
Even though Xica dons very elaborate costumes, the climax of the movie comes when the character sheds her clothes to perform a ritualistic dance. Her taut body fills the screen as she seduces a foppish Count eagerly watching her--not to mention the audience...