The emergence and devastation of the AIDS epidemic is chronicled in the lives of several gay men living during the 1980s.
I was not particularly aware of cinema in the 1980s, but my sense today (2017) is that this is an awfully important film. HIV and AIDS did not really become something mainstream films tackled until "Philadelphia", but this film was ahead of that curve being quite open and honest.
It also deserves praise, not just for exploring the issue of HIV, but for presenting gay men without reducing them to some kind of stereotype. All too often it seems "gay movies" play up the camp factor. This is fine, of course, but tends to further the idea that the gay community and society as a whole are mutually exclusive, which is anything but the truth.
I was not particularly aware of cinema in the 1980s, but my sense today (2017) is that this is an awfully important film. HIV and AIDS did not really become something mainstream films tackled until "Philadelphia", but this film was ahead of that curve being quite open and honest.
It also deserves praise, not just for exploring the issue of HIV, but for presenting gay men without reducing them to some kind of stereotype. All too often it seems "gay movies" play up the camp factor. This is fine, of course, but tends to further the idea that the gay community and society as a whole are mutually exclusive, which is anything but the truth.