VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Alive & Kicking
QQQ
Leave it to the Brits to remind us how to make gay movies. The best of the recent gay-themed films have been UK imports. American novelties like Kiss Me Guido and the big studio hit In & Out felt more comfortable when lampooning stereotypes -- both queeny gaysand bigoted straights.
If you wanted something closer to reality, you turned to things like Hollow Reed, a tender drama about a gay parent's struggle to rescue his son from abuse -- or even better, last year's excellent teen love story, Beautiful Thing. Among that good company, you can add this weekend's Alive & Kicking, another imported delight from Britain's Channel Four (PBS' Tales From the City.)
Jason Flemyng, after playing a gay-bashing jerk in Hollow Reed, jetes in a new direction as HIV-positive ballet dancer Tonio. The lead player in a flagging dance company ravaged by AIDS, the narcissistic Tonio has watched many of his friends die, most recently the company's most legendary dancer, Ramon (Anthony Higgens). A chance meeting at Ramon's funeral introduces him to the dancer's former therapist, Jack (Anthony Sher) and the two strike up an unusual relationship - one almost as adversarial as it is passionate.
Tonio is reluctant to fully give himself to Jack, though sleeping with him isn't out of the question. Jack's emotionally exhausting therapy sessions with AIDS sufferers, complicated by his alcoholism, further confound the pair's unlikely alliance. But both learn to appreciate their need for one another while vacationing abroad, and decide to stick it out despite the odds.
That the two can stand each other, much less find love together, is what audiences will grapple with. Tonio's self-absorbed nastiness and Jack's drinking binges sap a great deal of sympathy from both characters. Tonio is the attractive dancer with a flawless body; Jack is a dumpy therapist with a slight weight problem. But Flemyng and Sher move the coupling beyond the predictable gay trappings of body worship while wryly commenting on a culture obsessed with looking good.
As with most AIDS dramas, the tendencies for melodramatics are hard to avoid. Alive has more than its fair share of maudlin moments, but the lighter scenes balance out the heavy stuff nicely - Flemyng's failed attempt to sleep with his lesbian friend (Dorothy Tutin) is particularly amusing. But these characters and their lives ring true, warts and all, and that's something any audience can appreciate, regardless of sexual orientation.