Movie review: Tiptoes

Imagine the movie North Country cast with Brad Pitt playing Charlize Theron's role of the woman suffering sexual harassment at work. Not as a man suffering that harassment. Imagine Pitt cast in the part as a woman, without irony or satire.

Or imagine Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, about an urban cauldron of racial tension, but unironically cast entirely with white actors in the main roles. You know, because the actors are talented and it would be an exciting challenge to portray someone of another race convincingly when the audience is aware of exactly who they, as actors, are. Some of the white cast would need to wear blackface, but it's part of the craft of acting. Right?

Those movies had impressive scripts. But now imagine a film about an engaged couple where the woman gets pregnant but the man hasn't yet told her that dwarfism runs in his family. His twin brother is a dwarf, played in all seriousness by a well-known 5'10" actor.

Yep, the couple (Carol and Steven), an artist and firefighter, are played by Kate Beckinsale and Matthew McConaughey. That's them in the center of the photo for one DVD cover, at left. Gary Oldman, a great actor but 5'10", plays McConaughey's dwarf twin brother Rolfe (Oldman is also 12 years older than McConaughey), always filmed in lumpy clothing to hide the fact he's walking on his knees. He's in the picture at far right. Pictured at far left is Patricia Arquette, who plays Lucy the average-sized lover of Rolfe's weird, bitter French Marxist dwarf friend, Maurice. Maurice is played by Peter Dinklage, an actual little person and fantastic actor.* He doesn't appear anywhere in the photo, or the billing in that DVD cover photo.

Got that? Tiptoes, a movie about dwarfism with all average-size actors playing any character with billing. The secondary characters and extras include dozens of little folks, so it was a very conscious casting choice to not let dwarfs represent themselves in any major substantive character-developed way. And while it's good to see a film about dwarfism, exploring the unique difficulties and cultural events that bring little people together, they remain -- if you'll forgive me -- the sideshow to the average-sized people who spend the film talking about them or, in Oldman's case, acting as one of them.

False representation, however earnest or talented the actor, is still a form of silencing and control. Why shouldn't this be any less outrageous and offensive than blackface? Why is this accepted but we never see a male actor given a woman character for a role?

"Nothing about us without us." It's a disability rights political slogan for important reasons: too often someone else insists on controlling the story to ridiculous degrees.

Oh: I did enjoy little bits of the film. Dinklage was fun to see, and I do like all the actors in the cast. The script was uneven and boring toward the end. Tiptoes premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, but damned if I know why.


* Peter Dinklage played the lead in the film The Station Agent, which I reviewed here. He's also My Imaginary Boyfriend, so I may be slightly biased when I say he's the best thing in Tiptoes.