La sirène à barbe (French) [The Bearded Mermaid]

I am not sure I fully understood what this film was about. I mean, yes, I get that it was a story about a group of drag queen performers and their life, but I was quite confused between so many characters and what was the film actually trying to show. The plot tracks drag queens of The Bearded Mermaid cabaret, who put on a riveting show featuring singing, circus, and dancing—something never seen before in the small town of Dieppe in France.

One night, a lonely fisherman stumbles into “The Bearded Mermaid,” a faded little cabaret that turns out to be anything but ordinary. He steps into a world of laughter, glitter and love that he totally embraces, opening up to these characters as joyful as they are morose. Run by a fiercely committed trio of drag performers - firecracker Sweety, anxious stage manager Beluga who is also the 'mother' of them all, and gentle aerialist Alonso - the cabaret is struggling to keep its doors open. Their dream? A glitter-filled, lip-sync-and-circus spectacle that will put them on the tourist map. The fisherman then ventures into their world of joy and celebration and discovers, behind the costumes of the stage characters, tormented humans, lonely, too sensitive but ready to do anything to take this project as far as possible. At some point this fisherman starts to have an affair with one of the drag performers and they make a couple. The 'mother' has her own issues going on and the third drag queen also keeps going from one place to another with her bags. I was quite confused at one point what's going on. Anyway, eventually the group gets an opportunity ti perform in a club in Brighton, UK and they all have a gala time. Relationship will be tested when new boys in the new town will come into the mix. The film ends also quite abruptly as it started.

The film has a lot of musical numbers and honestly they are all pretty darn good. The music, singing and the performance - all of it. The actors felt amateur somehow and I wonder if they are real life drag queens! Corny one-liners and awkward line deliveries are balanced by moments of real vulnerability and backstage camaraderie. So, even though the film feels its meandering all over the place with no clear direction on where it wants to head, it still had some charm to it. The pace is quite uneven at time and I was struggling to keep a track of who the person was between the drag version and their natural version , especially between the two main drag performers. Also, I didnt understand how come Sweety suddenly falls for the young fisherman guy? One moment she rejects him saying he is too young and that she has a man at home and then she is all over him. It was decent, entertaining in Ana amateurish sort of way but also very confusing from a story and logic point of view. (4/10)

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