Ruby, an openly homosexual man, works as a drag queen at a gay bar to pay his bills One night he meets Paul, a district attorney, and is instantly drawn to him. While Ruby is not ashamed of who he is, Paul keeps his homosexuality behind closed doors, yet the two quickly fall head-over-heels for each other. When Ruby's junkie neighbor is arrested for drug possession, Rudy is drawn to her teenage son Marco, who suffers from down syndrome. With the neighbor in jail, Rudy and Paul take Marco in as their own, and provide a loving, unconventional unit. However, when this living arrangement is discovered by the authorities, Ruby and Paul start a legal battle with a biased legal system, intent on retaining custody of the child, whom they have grown to love. Travis Fine's Any Day Now is a film that waves its message quite clear about a society engulfed in discrimination against homosexuals, and while the film surely has an agenda, it's a powerful piece of filmmaking that left me feeling sick to my stomach. Any Day Now spends a lot of time showing how much Paul and Ruby care for Marco, and when the court battle begins it really does a great job at capturing how the biases of individuals corrupt their judgement about what is best for Marco. The prosecutor, judge, etc. all view homosexuality as this evil disease, and this discrimination blinds them from the truth of how much better Marco is with Ruby and Paul than even his own mother. This is a film that really should have been longer, spending more time early on establishing this growing love and affection which Paul and Ruby share. That isn't to say that their love doesn't feel genuine, it does, but if the film would have spent more time with them early on, the custody battle would have been even more emotionally impactful. Alan Cumming gives an all encompassing performance as Rudy, capturing the nuances of this type of character. Everything Rudy does throughout the entire film fits this character which Cumming has created and he really deserves accolades for such a brave performance. Any Day Now is film that is very clear about its intentions and while I do think a few moments came off as manipulative, this is one of the most powerful films I have seen in recent memory 8/10
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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