In his Vulture review of Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra, Matt Zoller Seitz writes that following about Matt Damon‘s performance as Scott Thorson: “It takes great talent and concentration to play such an opaque soul while still letting us think that we can see into his heart. [Damon] is too old for the part (though the makeup helps sell the illusion a bit), but it doesn’t really matter because he seems to remember what it was like to be a teenager, and lonely, and unformed as a person, and that knowledge infuses the performance.”

All of that is true except the guys who made Damon look like an 18 year-old (which was Thorson’s age was when he first tricked with Liberace) weren’t make-up artists, although make-up augmented — they were special-effects wizards. Damon’s face is de-aged in early Candelabra scenes via digital face-scrubbing. Plain as day when I saw it in big screen in Cannes; perhaps less apparent on your TV monitor. Did anyone who saw the film last night on HBO notice this?

The IMDB credits Robert Garrigus with delivering the film’s special effects. Ryan Andersen of Shade VFX as being the visual effects editorial coordinator, and Shade’s Bryan Godwin was the visual effects supervisor. One of these guys is most likely the person most responsible. Daniel A Flores of Shade VFX is credited as rotoscope artist and yaddah yaddah…the list goes on and on.

General reactions to the film?