Any Day Now is a captivating film based on a true story, which highlights the social injustice and discrimination of the legal system in America during the 1970’s.
Directed by Travis Fine, who also co-wrote the script with George Arthur Bloom, it stars Alan Cuming as Rudy Donatello, an entertainer earning a meager living as a lip-syncing drag queen in a West Hollywood nightclub. It is here he meets boyfriend Paul Fleiger (Garrett Dillahunt), who works in the District Attorney’s office.
When his young neighbour Marco (Isaac Leyva), a 14-year-old boy with Down Syndrome, is left at home alone by his mother, Rudy steps in to help. Fleiger had declared he became a lawyer “to change the world and make a difference”, so Rudy seeks him out for legal support – a move which initially causes surprise and embarrassment for the closeted lawyer. After facing a number of challenges, the men are granted temporary custody of Marco under emergency orders, but not without further discrimination and being marginalised by an inequitable system.
In their own way, with the odds against them, each character searches for a sense of family and a place to call home. The home-style-movie scenes and Cummings’ rendition of the title song are particularly moving and poignant.
Any Day Now is a tender, eye-opening film which shines light on the consequences of stretching the boundaries of convention in a society that’s steeped in prejudice and outmoded laws that lack humanity.
The film has won a host of international awards, including best film and best actor (Cumming) at the Seattle Film Festival in 2012 in the year of its American release. Cummings’ stand-out performance is a career highlight and a draw card to this must-see movie.
© Patricia Herreen 2014