Kinky Boots

While trying to keep my huge collection of film DVDs (yes sir, I’m very proud of it; fruits of almost 10 years of labour), in order, now that I’m planning to shift, I chanced upon the copy of ‘Kinky Boots’, a British comedy, so quaint and so touching! It’s not a great movie by any standard, but it’s a riveting experience to watch this film, just for one person — Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Roger Ebert begins his review of ‘Kinky Boots’ with a profile on Ejiofor: One of the gifts of movies is the way they introduce us to new actors, turning them this way and that in the light of the screen, allowing us to see the fullness of their gifts. Consider Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose first leading role was in "Dirty Pretty Things" (2002), as a Nigerian doctor reduced in London to working in a mortuary. Then came a romantic role in "Love Actually" (2003), a South African activist in "Red Dust" (2004), a space opera villain in "Serenity" (2005), and a New York detective in Spike Lee's current "Inside Man" (2006). Along the way he has worked for Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and John Singleton (a vicious mobster in "Four Brothers" in 2005) and has done Shakespeare and The Canterbury Tales for TV. Born in London in 1974, he works easily with British, American and Nigerian accents.

Now he plays a drag queen in "Kinky Boots." It is a performance all the more striking because he doesn't play any kind of drag queen I've ever seen in the movies. He plays the role not as a man pretending to be a woman, and not as a woman trapped in a man's body, and not as a parody of a woman, and not as a gay man, but as a drag queen, period: Lola, a tall, athletic performer in thigh-high red boots who rules the stage of a drag club as if she were born there, and is a pretty good singer, too. In preparing for the role, Ejiofor must have decided not to simper, not to preen, not to mince, but to belt out songs with great good humor that dares the audience to take exception. If "simper," "preen" and "mince" are stereotypical words, well, then, most drag queens, including Lola's backup dancers, are stereotypical performers. Not Lola.

And Ebert ends his review with a praise for Ejiofor: "Kinky Boots" has few surprises, unless you seriously expect the factory to go bankrupt. The climax comes at the annual shoe show in Milan, where last-minute developments unfold right on schedule; having provided us with Lola, the movie is conventional in all other departments. But Ejiofor's performance as Lola shows an actor doing what not every actor can do: Taking a character bundled with stereotypes, clearing them out of the way, and finding a direct line to who the character really is. Just in the way she walks in those kinky red boots, Lola makes an argument that no words could possibly improve upon.

Notes: It's pronounced Chew-i-tell Edge-o-for. "Kinky Boots" is based on a true story. Check it out at www.divine.co.uk/ (not safe for work).
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