This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat. The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
Chris & Don tells the story of a romance that began on the beaches of Santa Monica in the 1950s, when Christopher Isherwood at age 48 met Don Bachardy who then was eighteen years old. Isherwood, an established author with works such as The Berlin Stories, which helped inspire much of Cabaret, helped Bachardy discover and develop his affinity for drawing and painting as he became a renowned portrait painter during the second half of the 20th century to the present. The film, told through Don, chronicles how they met, their move from Europe to USA, what was their life like and how the love grew between them.
The 30-year difference between an upper-crust British writer and a young Californian glamour-hound was just one of the difficulties facing the pair in the 1950s, yet the strength of their love through the ups and downs of a relationship that blossomed for three decades was what kept them together up to Isherwood’s death in 1986, and what makes Chris & Don: A Love Story one of the most positive, affecting portrayals of queer romance in recent memory. You see genuine romantic longing between the two men while Don revisiting his love for the man of his life. Not everything was roses for them. Don recounts the days when he almost left Chris but came to sense and how Chris has always been a lover, mentor and his love all throughout his life. Using the video archival footage of their earlier days is a masterstroke in creating this documentary and it makes it very relatable. Isherwood and Bachardy's story features cameos by a galaxy of literary and cinema stars. The film ends on a poignant note where Don displays the final drawings he made of Isherwood, sketched immediately after his death from cancer, before his body was removed from the house.
I doubt we will find love stories like this in today's time. As much as anyone who has ever been in love, Don carries Isherwood in every aspect of his being, just as he always has and always will. (6//10)
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