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 ...
It focuses on a group of men, who had given up on life when they were diagnosed until medicines started showing up that could help HIV converting to AIDS. While these medicines gave these men a new lease of life, but now suddenly all these men have to plan to live and put back their life together, something that they had given up on. It follows a sort of day-in-the-life of these men, watching them as they eat breakfast, brush their teeth, take medication, smoke a cigarette, go to the gym, do yoga, paint, have dinner with friends, or go out drinking and dancing at a bar. They discuss wasting, fatigue, show us their sores and list the ways they’ve tried to maintain their bodies. It’s frank, eye-opening and far from the pervasive belief that HIV is now a once-a-day pill and no side effects.
The film provides a window into the lives of these men, and the voiceover format makes it feel like a conversation. It is a beautiful portrait of a population not often viewed, discussed, or even given voice within the LGBTQ+ community. “How do you deal with the fact that you lived in a war zone where people were literally dropping dead all around you and nobody even acknowledged the fact that it went on?” said one man in the film. Although strides have been made in the last 30 years to be sure, the battle for equality is far from over. There is something relatable about this documentary that reminds us that HIV has not been eradicated, and that living with HIV – while not the death sentence it once was – still poses its own set of problems. It does get very wordy at some point because you are following 10-12 different individuals and in a typical documentary style, you cut from one person to another and hear tidbits about their life. Given that there were so many subjects, it was easy to lose track of what an individual's story was. Having said that, spit hits shortcomings, this documentary was definitely an interesting watch for sure. It is about optimism and how to find ways to survive in a society which wasn't made for you, and which would often rather pretend you didn't exist. (6/10)
Comments