A CUT ABOVE

For the past few months, a low-budget, crowd-funded film called Swan Song has created quite a buzz. It’s about a real-life gay hairdresser Pat Pitsenbarger (1943-2012), whom writer-director Todd Stephens knew when he was growing up in Sandusky, Ohio.

Played in the film by veteran actor Udo Kier, Pat, who is retired, ill and in a care home, reluctantly agrees to travel to a funeral parlour to dress the hair of a recently deceased former customer. But the journey to this appointment is less sentimental and more thoughtful than you might expect, given Stephens’s CV (, ). Most of the praise for the picture, however, has been reserved for Kier, who