Solo: Montreal-Set Drag Drama Explores the Perils of Misplaced Trust

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B+

“We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag,” is the signature phrase of RuPaul Andre Charles, whose hit television show RuPaul’s Drag Race has made drag performance a popular 21st-century phenomenon.

At the same time, that gender-flexible perspective has made the once-marginal art form a favourite target of a today’s right-wing culture warriors. In the current cultural climate, you might expect that Solo, a new drag-centred film which won the Best Canadian Feature prize at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, would be provocatively topical.

In fact, Solo is sincerely old-fashioned, a film that focuses not on hot button issues but on tender, age-old affairs of the heart. The third collaboration between Quebec director-writer Sophie Dupuis and actor Théodore Pellerin (Family First, Underground) harks back to vintage big-screen backstage melodramas such as A Star Is Born and All About Eve, scaled down to the interiors of small Montreal bars and apartments. Essentially a lip-synched musical, Solo weaves between flashy onstage performances full of attitude and artifice, with domestic scenes of intimacy and conflict.

Pellerin plays Simon who, by day, is an eager-to-please makeup artist. By night, he transforms into the willowy, imperious Glory Gore, who twirls and sways about the stage to vintage disco hits. Mostly, he seems content. As well as enjoying the backtalk and camaraderie of his fellow performers, Simon has a warm relationship with his father and stepmother, enjoying regular Sunday brunches at their home. He’s especially close to his sister, dress designer Maude (Alice Moreault), who helps him with his act.

One area of conflict between the siblings is the subject of their mother, Claire (Anne-Marie Cadieux), a famous and beautiful opera singer living in Europe, who left the family 15 years ago. When Simon’s dad says the mother will be coming to Montreal, it sparks a quarrel between the siblings. Simon sees her as an artist, his role model in a way, who had to pursue her artistic calling. Maude considers her a narcissist who abandoned her needy children and wants nothing to do with her.

Dupuis’ script draws a direct psychological line between Simon’s idolizing the parent who abandoned him and his susceptibility to emotional manipulation in a new relationship. One day, while preparing for a performance, Simon meets Olivier (Félix Maritaud), a brash young Frenchman who’s the latest member of the troupe.

The two flirt briefly and make a quick instant physical and creative connection. They go to bed, share a bath, and decide to collaborate on a duo act. It soon becomes clear that, for all his initial charm, Olivier or “Oli” does not have Simon’s best interests at heart. He is gradually revealed to be a passive-aggressive manipulator who isolates Simon from his sister, undermines him to the other performers, and works at cratering Simon’s confidence.

As the relationship spirals downward, Simon’s mother Claire arrives in town for a concert. A celebrity, she offers a flurry of air-kisses and pleasantries but makes it clear she can barely fit Simon into her busy schedule, though he does manage to get her to watch him perform, an evening that leads to a humiliating meltdown.

The script’s emphasis on Simon’s parallel toxic relationships feels psychologically pat. For a more complete relationship map, you’d want to understand more about Claire’s anti-maternal insensitivity or Olivier’s cruelty.

Still, Solo largely succeeds, thanks to Dupuis’ confident handling of the tonal shifts between off- and onstage scenes in a series of stylishly lit interiors. The performances feel grounded and credible, with Pellerin especially good in revealing Simon’s contradictions, between anxious vulnerability and resilience.

Though Solo’s performance numbers are mostly dance-club oldies, from Donna Summer to ABBA, the music hits a perfect closing note with Simon’s, a.k.a. Glory Gore’s triumphant performance set to Perfume Genius’ “Queen,” a proud, plaintive song rich in the torch-song spirit of tarnished, defiant dignity.

Solo. Written and directed and written by Sophie Dupuis. Starring Théodore Pellerin, Félix Maritaud, Alice Moreault and Anne-Marie Cadieux. Opens at Toronto’s Varsity Theatres September 29 and in additional English markets October 6.