Victor/Victoria

Year: 1982

Country: UK, USA

Tagline: The disguise surprise comedy of the year!

Plot: In Paris 1934, Victoria Grant is a talented but poor soprano singer looking for work. She is in extremely dire straits: she offers to sleep with her hotel manager for her rent and her next meal, and later when she auditions at the Chez Lui nightclub she is rejected by its snooty head waiter Labisse. During the audition, she meets Carroll Todd (aka Toddy), a sharp-tongued but kind homosexual singer working at the Chez Lui; when Toddy discovers during work that his partner Richard has been cheating on him, his acid retorts set off a riot and Labisse fires him. The two meet again and befriend each other at a restaurant, where they get out of paying a full-course meal by planting cockroaches into the food.Victoria spends a rainy night over at Toddys apartment, and the next morning dresses up in Richards clothes since hers were ruined by the rain. When Richard arrives and insults Toddy for his troublemaking at Chez Lui, Victoria punches him out and orders him in a deep masculine voice to leave and never come back. Watching her performance, Toddy hits upon a brilliant scheme: Victoria will pose as a man, the female impersonator Count Victor Grasinski, a hitherto unheard singer who Todd took as his lover and whose talent is guaranteed to become renowned.Toddys plan goes off successfully: Victor is a great success and becomes the toast of Paris. Then American gangster King Marchand arrives in Paris on vacation, with his bodyguard Squash Bernstein and his moll Norma Cassidy. King is quite taken with the female Victor, which upsets Norma until they learn Victor is a female impersonator and thus a man. Norma is delighted, but King is confused by his feelings for Victor and becomes obsessed with him, to the point where he is unable to perform in bed with Norma and sends her back to America.Marchand starts to investigate Victor, trying to find out just what it is that attracts him. He spies on Victor while taking a bath (possibly learning of Victoria?), and later takes him and Toddy to Chez Lui. When Richard arrives at the restaurant, yet another riot breaks out there, and this time results in the club getting closed down. King escapes the ruckus with Victor and declares his love, saying it doesnt matter if he is a man. Victoria, who has been equally attracted to King, reveals herself, and the two consummate their relationship. Squash bursts in on the two making love, and seeing King with a man encourages Squash to reveal that he himself is gay; he later learns about Victoria, but develops a romance with Toddy.Although King and Victoria are in love, things start to get complicated: Victoria is unwilling to give up her Victor persona since its made her a star, and King wishes she would drop it, for their sake and his (being seen with a homosexual was not a good thing back in the 1930s). Both attempt to keep the relationship short-term and do gay stuff together, but eventually things get too unfulfilling and frustrating for them. To make matters worse, Labisse suspects Victor of being the singer hed rejected, and hires a private investigator to investigate him.Eventually, Victoria decides her successful career isnt worth its complications and heartaches and decides to renounce Victor and become a woman again. Her decision is compounded by two events. Firstly, Kings mobster associate Sal heard about Kings homosexuality from his new moll Norma, and since the mob doesnt tolerate homosexuality King must sign over all he has to Sal; Victoria reveals herself to save King, to Normas rage. Secondly, Labisse brings the police to arrest Victoria, but is foiled by Toddy dressing up as Victor and going to perform.The film ends with Victor Grasinski (still Toddy) making a swansong appearance, performing a cabaret number to the delight of Victoria and King and Squash.On the verge of starvation in 1930s Paris, erstwhile entertainer Victoria is rescued by gay cabaret performer Toddy. Victoria then finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.

Watch Victor/Victoria Here