Only a few days after its positive reception at the Cannes Film Festival, Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh's final narrative feature before his long-promised retirement debuts in its native country not in theaters, but on HBO. Considering the star power in front of (Michael Douglas and Matt Damon) and behind (Soderbergh, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and producer Jerry Weintraub) the camera, this may be the most high-profile movie ever to go the straight-to-cable route and it's worth noting that Candelabra wasn't intended to be produced as a telefilm. Soderbergh hoped to find a theatrical backer and distributor, but only HBO was willing to pony up the dough. That's a shame and also rather surprising since the film -- a biopic/relationship drama depicting the six-year romance between vintage entertainer and closeted gay man, Liberace (Douglas) and his latest boytoy Scott Thorson (Damon) -- turns out to be an entirely commercial-minded biopic that could very easily have played in multiplexes or at least a major art house chain. On the plus side, I suppose, premiering on HBO means that Douglas will finally be able to put an Emmy on his trophy shelf alongside his two Oscars.

I don't mean to suggest that Candelabra is purely an awards-bait vehicle, although I'm sure that thought occurred to the eternally savvy Weintraub at least. It's a well-acted, well-written and well-executed film that treats its subjects and story with respect and intelligence. At the same time, though, it's also one of Soderbergh's least interesting films from a formal perspective. There's little of the narrative shuffling he employed to such memorable effect in Out of Sight and The Limey or the sly subversion of expectations seen in Magic Mike and The Informant!. And it's certainly not as bold a departure from the biopic template as his two-part epic Che, one of the director's most underrated and misunderstood films. No, Candelabra finds Soderbergh playing the material completely -- for lack of a better word -- straight. It's not unlike the way Gus Van Sant put aside his typical formal playfulness when he made the equally respectful and well-made Oscar-nominated biopic, Milk. In both cases, I suspect that the filmmakers' motivation in adopting a more conventional style and structure was the desire to have these stories reach a wider audience rather than be marginalized as "gay films." In other words, they wanted these movies to play like Brokeback Mountain rather than, say, Weekend or Shortbus.

Like Van Sant, Soderbergh is too intelligent, too engaged a filmmaker to just direct on autopilot. So he finds small ways to bring his particular aesthetic to the screen, whether it's by regularly framing Liberace and Scott in medium-shot to better capture the opulence that threatens to swallow them whole in Liberace's grand domicile, or ending the movie with a fantasy-tinged musical performance in which Douglas essentially sings his alter ego off to heaven. (It's a less flamboyant recreation of Joe Gideon's ten-minute tour de force farewell that closes out Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. I dare you not to watch that amazing sequence in its entirety again.) In general, though, Soderbergh has made a conscious decision to service the characters and conventionally chronological narrative first.

Opening in 1977, the movie actually starts with Scott rather than his more famous lover, who he meets after attending a show in the company of their mutual friend, Bob (Scott Bakula). Liberace is immediately drawn to the strapping young man (although at 42, Damon's just a touch too old to be playing a twentysomething stud; still, he's definitely got the bare ass of a man half his age) and quickly instills him in his home as his kept man. (In a nice touch, Scott is seen moving in to Liberace's mansion just as his new sugar daddy's ex -- played by Cheyenne Jackson -- is being shown the door. It's a shorthand way of acknowledging that all of this has happened before and will happen again.) What happens next is the typical rise-and-fall arc of a Hollywood-set romance: Scott and Liberace love each other passionately for a time, until drugs, one-night stands and arguments over when they last had sex take their toll and the two quit each other on terrible terms. Then, an early '80s coda briefly brings them back together, as Scott goes to see his AIDS-stricken former lover on his deathbed in the small bungalow that has replaced the long-gone glittering mansion. This, by the way, is the scene you can expect to see played on Emmy night just before Douglas is handed his Outstanding Actor in a Miniseries or Movie statue, while Damon -- who won Outstanding Supporting Actor honors earlier in the night, despite being the co-lead -- applauds.

I poke fun at the Emmy clip-ready feel of that moment, but I also own up to being wholly moved by the way Damon and Douglas play that scene. In fact, part of me wishes that Soderbergh had built the entire movie around that single encounter -- a chamber piece in which a dying man and his former lover reflect on their time together. (If I were feeling particularly draconian, I'd slap a "no flashbacks" rule on that version of the story, but might allow Soderbergh one or two if they were judiciously placed.) And throughout Candelabra, the familiarity of the storytelling is thankfully offset by the stars' committed performances. Few real-life figures offer the potential for going completely over the top as Liberace, but Douglas effectively walks a tricky line, portraying him as both showman and human. And while Scott, as written, is little more than a narrative device -- our tour guide to Liberace's life, if you will -- Damon's naturally likable screen presence invests us in his all-too obvious fate. (Kudos as well to some inspired casting choices amongst the supporting actors, from Dan Aykroyd as Liberace's duplicitous manager to Rob Lowe as an overly ebullient '70s plastic surgeon and lifestyle coach.) As a longtime Soderbergh admirer, I had hoped that his final film (for now) would be more daring and ambitious than this. But as an appreciator of good movies, I have to acknowledge that Behind the Candelabra fits the bill.

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