Glam isn't dead--where are you Lady Gaga?

This review is intended for people 18 years and older.

Curt Wild, bathed in glitter, stripped of his shirt, liquid running down his hairless chest, touches himself on stage, liberates his body from his tight leather pants, and Brian Slade falls in love. Wild sends Slade’s world spinning. The glam rockers didn’t just create their music, they lived it.

Velvet Goldmine, Director Todd Haynes's on-screen tribute to the death of glam rock, is loosely based on the experiences and personalities of musicians David Bowie and Iggy Pop, with Citizen Kane undertones and Oscar Wilde references. Glam rock lasted less than half a decade of music history, bridging the collapse of the Bob Dylan engrossed hippies and the revolution of punk.

The film opens in the childhood of Oscar Wilde. Before leaping a century ahead to a music-crazed London, the movie shows an eight-year-old Wilde announcing his aspirations: “I want to be a pop idol.” He never said this, but Bowie did.

The final concert of Brian Slade’s Maxwell Demon alter ego (a parallel to Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona) is where the story begins. Slade (a long-haired hippie turned glamorous Jonathan Rhys Meyers) fakes his onstage death, and journalist Arthur Stuart (a convincing Christian Bale) travels back to his glam-obsessed youth to piece together the events that led to his “death”.

The central focus of the film is the relationship between bisexual rockers Slade and Wild. Together they give birth to glam and live in their own world during a time of sexual experimentation, where homosexuality is not only accepted but embraced. This is something Haynes, who is openly gay, can appreciate.

Velvet Goldmine is a visually complex film, driven by an ornate costume design, and colors that scream for attention. “A slut in fancy clothes” may be the best description of Mr. Meyers. His painted-blue body embraces the floor like a worm. His glitter eye makeup, sequenced glitter belly shirts, tight leather pants, green alligator coats and platform boots are enough to send any teen, including Bale, into delirium. It’s a beautiful movie. Although the script and the acting are often exaggerated to the extreme, Haynes’s film is nevertheless an accurate depiction of the glam lifestyle and the ritzy dream of musicians like Brian Slade and Curt Wild. This film can sum up glam rock in costume alone.

Much of the acting is overshadowed by the flashy musical numbers and glitter-infested wardrobes. Toni Collette, who plays Mandy Slade, is the only actor to reach her full potential, and saves the script from being a complete failure. She arrives on screen as Slade’s objection of affection. Ten years later, as Stuart uncovers the mystery of Brian Slade demise, he tracks her down and finds her in a bar doing a one-woman act (a parallel to Citizen Kane) swinging between an artificial British accent and her natural American accent—a testimony to what she’s suffered. While glam essentially ruined rockers like Wild and Slade, Ms. Collette’s convincing performance shows the real damage that was done.

Velvet Goldmine is a piece of eye candy that never loses its flavor, but the music is half the equation. The film is about glam rock, and the music reflects this style. Although Bowie withheld the rights to his songs, similarities exist, and music supervisor Randall Poster collaborated with a group of musicians (including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke) who experienced glam to make the music true to the time. The visuals make it difficult to pay attention to the vocals, but Mr. Meyers and Mr. McGregor aren’t half bad—distractions avoided.

The era of glam rock as a musical phenomenon may be long gone, but glam isn’t dead. Haynes just brought glam to the cinema, but it’s racing back into the covers of Rolling Stone and Vogue, MTV and beyond. It’s Lady Gaga in concert. Glam was about the message behind the music as much as it was about physical appearances: that anyone can invent himself, and such contrivance has liberated generations of outcasts. That you could dress up and become whomever you want is what Haynes succeeds in translating into film.