Portraying Judy Garland during the last year of her life, Rene Zellweger delivers a transformative, all-encompassing performance in Judy , the new biopic that seems poised to catapult her to Oscar glory once again.

Much of the buzz surrounding Judy, which hit theaters last month, has emphasized the films musical numbers. While Zellweger may lack much of Garlands vocal prowess, she makes up for it in sheer moxie; her renditions of The Trolley Song and Over the Rainbow are riveting.

Of course, the film would be far less effective without its intimate moments too. One of the most poignant scenes depicts Garland meeting a gay couple, Dan and Stan (played by Andy Nyman and Daniel Cerqueira ), who wait for their idol to exit the stage door after a concert. Through an unlikely series of events, Garland winds up at the couples apartment, where a night of revelry ends with an emotional discussion of how the two men find comfort in her music and films while maintaining their relationship amid legal and social persecution.

The scene, which appears about halfway through the film and has been singled out in numerous reviews , is very much an allegory. While Dan and Stan are fictional, they stand in for the legions of LGBTQ fans who embraced Garland during her career peaks from The Wizard of Oz to A Star is Born and, later, live at Carnegie Hall and stuck by the star as her private bouts of depression and drug addiction became more pronounced.

For many of those admirers, the connection was personal in more ways than one. Many historians believe friend of Dorothy , a code term used to explain that a man is gay that became popular in the mid-20th century, was inspired by Garland .