Longtime Companion (1989)

As far as I know, Longtime Companion, released in 1990, is the first American motion picture to deal head on with AIDS (whereas Philadelphia (1993), staring Tom Hanks, receives the honor of the first STUDIO film about AIDS). Made on an obviously minuscule budget, this film nevertheless captures an honesty about AIDS and its effects through touchingly real vignettes of a the lives of a group of friends. Some of these mini-stories fall a bit flat, and the film's politics at times seems overly optimistic -- we're supposed to believe that on a TV soap opera a full and deep man-on-man kiss would have happened in 1984.

The unfettered filmmaking and straightforward acting (especially by the subsequently Oscar nominated Bruce Davison), however, keep both the story and the audience grounded -- there are several scenes that seemed so very real that my heart truly ached for these characters. In today's age of expanded understanding of the homosexual heart (that it is, in fact, in no way different from any other heart), the Longtime of Longtime Companion may not seem too terribly extraordinary; within the context of American cinema, however, I have a feeling that history will see this film for the landmark it truly is.