Review of LONGTIME COMPANION by Bill Warren

Movies about AIDS have, so far, concentrated on one or two people suffering from the always-fatal disease; the disturbing, moving "Longtime Companion" takes the courageous step of expanding the number of people with AIDS depicted in its story. It struck the homosexual community just as this much- (and wrongfully-) maligned subgroup in our culture was finding its own identity, just as the persecution of them was beginning to abate. The party soon began to take on a sour note -- because AIDS strikes primarily young men between 20 and 40, a time when slow death just was never a factor before.

The film begins on July 3, 1981, the day that the first article on the disease soon to become known as AIDS (Acquire Immune Deficiency Syndrome) appeared in the New York Times. Playwright Craig Lucas, in his first screenplay, presents some overlapping groups of gay friends and lovers. Wealthy David (Bruce Davison) has a home on Fire Island, which he shares with his lover Sean (Mark Lamos). They've been together for four years now, and are obviously content that they have found the companion for the rest of their lives, but David, who's a bit shallow, still eyes handsome young guys on the beach. Their friends Willy (Campbell Scott) and John (Dermot Mulroney), longtime friends but not lovers, are visiting, and the same weekend, Willy begins a romance with Fuzzy (Stephen Caffrey), a shaggy young man visiting this predominately gay resort on Long Island.

In the city, Howard (Patrick Cassidy, son of Jack), an actor, and his longtime lover Paul (John Dossett), celebrate Howard's getting a role on a daytime soap opera, which coincidentally is cowritten by Sean. In an ironic twist which one suspects may have had a basis in real life, Howard, presumed to be straight by all who work with him on the soap, is required to play the role of a gay. Lisa (Mary-Louise Parker), the straight young woman who lives next door to Howard and Paul, and is Fuzzy's best friend since childhood, provides a link between those centering on David and Sean, and Howard and Paul.

When the news article in the Times is read by everyone, there's a mixture of fear and disinterest. Most assume that somehow the kaposi sarcoma mentioned in the article is being spread by amyl nitrate "poppers," a sexual enhancement favored by gays, or has something to do with promiscuity. At first, no one even considers assuming that the disease is 100% fatal, or that the latency period can be as long as it is. In a horrifying, touching moment, when one of our favorite characters in the film later suspects he has AIDS, his lover points out that they have been monogamous for four years, and of course AIDS couldn't wait that long to develop. AIDS, of course, can lie dormant for at least seven years.

The film moves in mostly one-year jumps; we see several scenes involving all the main characters, and then a title tells us it's a year later, through nine sequences of increasing loss. And soon AIDS begins taking its toll of these young men whom we've now come to know and like. At first, the story is set out among the pines and sand dunes of Fire Island, but slowly hospital corridors, beds, and pain begin to dominate the sequences, and people learn to find resources they didn't know they had.

When the deliberate, tender but cold-blooded scheme of writer Lucas and director Norman Rene' becomes clear, we begin to dread each of those one-year intervals, because we soon learn that another character we like will be stricken -- the film becomes painfully suspenseful. The circle draws tighter -- the first to die of the disease is John, not romantically linked with any of the group -- and the numbers diminish, and we who are heterosexual begin to understand the terror and pain experienced by those in that group, gay men, most heavily stricken by this horrifying disease.

One of the characters says that he feels that something is stalking him, and so it seems that way to us as well. Lucas is a playwright -- among his works, "Reckless," "Prelude to a Kiss," "Blue Window" -- who knows how to draw sympathetic, realistic characters who are understandable to straights as well as gays. These men mean and do no harm to anyone, they only wish, like all of us, to enjoy their lives, and because they enjoyed their lives, they die, one by one.

But it isn't just the deaths that affect us, it's what the deaths do to those left behind. Willy has been drifting through life; he had one anchor, John, but he dies very soon. Willy becomes terrified of any kind of outside contact, clinging to Fuzzy, who to a degree resents this, but stays with the frightened Willy. When he visits another friend with AIDS, Willy secretly scrubs away the man's kiss. But the disease that destroys his friends eventually gives Willy a kind of strength; he moves from being a lightweight outsider to an AIDS activist. Amazingly, Scott's face actually seems to mature through the years shown in the film; it's a tribute to him as an actor, and to a subtle makeup job, that his face changes from soft roundness to a harder, leaner look.

Bruce Davison is probably best known to people as Willard from the movie of the same name, but he's been doing fine work in television and movies ever since. He's never found a firm identity either as an actor or a star, however, and so has undoubtedly missed out on top roles that he deserved. In "Longtime Companion," however, Davison has a simple, powerful scene that confirms the opinion of many that he's a fine, underused actor. As Sean lies dying of AIDS, David courageously tends him, day by day, not finding strength, but simply using it. And at the moment of Sean's death, David sits beside the man he loves, and whispers to him, "I'm right here, let it go, let it go, I'm right here, it's all right, let it go," over and over, until you shed the tears he does not. If there's any finer moment by an actor this year, I'll be very surprised.

I must pay tribute to the courage of the straight actors who play the leading roles in this film; in the past, the "stigma" of playing a homosexual seems to have affected the careers of several of those who've done so. There's no reason that it should, of course -- an actor should be able to play any role he (or she) is physically suited for. A killer, a priest, a homosexual, or even an actor, without necessarily being thought he IS one. (Including, of course, actor...)

Rene''s direction is well-observed and realistic, but it doesn't allow for much color; David's shallowness is depicted a bit too subtlety. The movie is not sentimental; if anything, it's brutal, because it's unsparing of us and of the characters. The guys you want not to die are taken from you, until there are only two survivors, on the beach at Fire Island in 1989. The title, "Longtime Companion," is the euphemism for "lover" used in obituaries of gays, but it also, bitterly, refers to the disease AIDS itself.

Straights who try to understand and gays who have to understand can do nothing about the sad bigotry of people like Andy Rooney, well- meaning but obtuse, who without meaning to suggest that homosexuals brought all this on themselves. No one did. It is a vicious irony of nature, and nothing more. For eight years we had a president who turned his back on ten percent of the population of this country for fear of offending the worst among us. Hollywood, being in the business of business, has also avoided controversial topics -- but why should a plague like AIDS be controversial? Almost no family in this country has gone untouched by this ghastly disease, and more will be in times to come. We need a movie like "Longtime Companion." It's not all it could and perhaps should have been as a movie; it has flaws. The cast should have been richer, the pace a bit tighter, and the writing a little more distinctive. But it addresses, in a particularly honest and searing fashion, just what AIDS is and does: it is a disease that kills, and by its very nature, it tears apart loving relationships. Yet it took a long time to find the financial backing for this film.

It does show young men embracing and kissing, but it is not exploitative; there's nothing remotely raunchy or lewd about this. The scenes are simply romantic. "We didn't want the movie to be about being gay," according to director Rene', in Premiere, and it isn't. It's about loss, it's about surviving, and it is about love.

In the same article, Rene' also said that "What struck Craig and me was that here we are in a community of people in their 20s and 30s who are being asked to deal with death on a daily basis. We wanted to show how the human spirit is able to confront such a phenomenon." This they have done, with compassion, wit and tenderness; "Longtime Companion" is a film for everyone.

I hate to have to add this note, but in our society those who come out in favor of the rights of various minorities and subgroups are generally suspected of being IN that minority or subgroup -- otherwise why defend it so strongly? My support of gay rights is strictly theoretical: I am not homosexual; I'm quite heterosexual, and have been married since 1966. But that doesn't blind me to the tragedy that is AIDS; I hope that this is true for the rest of you as well.

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