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TIME: Almanac 1990s
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<text id=90TT1242>
<title>
May 14, 1990: The Really Big Chill
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
May 14, 1990 Sakharov Memoirs
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
CINEMA, Page 96
The Really Big Chill
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By Richard Corliss
</p>
<qt>
<l>LONGTIME COMPANION</l>
<l>Directed by Norman Rene</l>
<l>Screenplay by Craig Lucas</l>
</qt>
<p> This is an AIDS drama that...Wait, don't go away! We
know you gave at the office. We figure you feel sympathy for
Ryan White--and pity, at least, for others with the disease,
even if they are homosexuals or intravenous drug users. And we
realize that, with all the goodwill in the world, you are in
no rush to see sick people suffer. You get enough of that each
night on the network news.
</p>
<p> Still, you should listen up about Longtime Companion. For
it is a splendidly bitchy comedy, The Women crossed with The
Big Chill. Also a soap opera, a horror movie and a how-to
manual on coping with catastrophe. On a small budget, writer
Craig Lucas and director Norman Rene (who teamed just as
productively on the Broadway comedy Prelude to a Kiss) have
created a beguiling panorama. It spans the '80s, a decade that,
for gay men and those who love them, took a fatal tailspin
from high camp to tragedy. The film is a juggling act--of
characters, attitudes and moods--that never loses it balance.
</p>
<p> Longtime Companion begins as a memoir of those heady days--they may literally be called gay--when everyone was strong
and supple, when partying was a kind of performance art, when
promiscuous sex was both a political declaration and a fashion
statement. It is the summer of '81. Sean (Mark Lamos) and David
(Bruce Davison), a middle-aged couple, watch a hunky guy stroll
past them on a Fire Island beach, and their toes curl with wry
pleasure. But a New York Times story about a newly discovered
condition afflicting homosexual men has the gentle revelers
wondering: Is the CIA trying to scare them out of having sex?
Best to turn their trademark withering irony into irony about
withering. "We got gay restaurants now, and gay doctors," notes
Fuzzy (Stephen Caffrey). "And gay cancer."
</p>
<p> As the disease begins to run rampant through the community,
gay men begin to realize that it will not provide a glamorous,
Dark Victory-style degeneration. Any illness can be ugly, and
so can the response to it. Amid a sickroom's strained bonhomie,
Willy (Campbell Scott) tiptoes away to wash off the light kiss
of an infected friend. But others find the option of heroic
devotion. David, now nursemaid to the ailing Sean, covers up
when Sean's boss calls, and diapers the incontinent patient.
Because David is also standing a potential deathwatch on his
future, his caring grace is spectacular. This is what love is.
</p>
<p> "What do you think happens when we die?" "We get to have sex
again." Lucas and Rene know AIDS is not God's punishment for
having sex, and their film is not afraid to show gay men being
randily affectionate toward one another. But Longtime Companion
represents no special pleading for gays; it is about any group
of people who might get blindsided by a plague. Thanks to a
terrific ensemble cast (including, in addition to the above,
Dermot Mulroney, Mary-Louise Parker and Patrick Cassidy), these
people are quirky, compassionate, plenty human. You are
encouraged to laugh along with this wonderfully funny and, of
course, heartbreaking picture. It's O.K. to laugh, and, at the
end, it's O.K. to cry.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>