bkoganbing Some thirty years after The Boys In The Band presented a view of gay male life that was before Stonewall, before AIDS, before Anita Bryant. A lot of history and a lot of heartache individually and collectively happened in this time. So Terrence McNally penned a work with another group of eight gay men and put them at a vacation home on a lake in Dutchess County, New York. The three holiday weekends they spend there reveal a lot about themselves.Hosts of the event are John Benjamin Hickey and Stephen Sellars a same sex couple who've been together for 15 years. Like so many in those years they've seen way too many of their friends die and one of those friends invited is Jason Alexander who is HIV+ positive who comes by himself. Alexander is almost a stereotype of a gay man who loves his Broadway musicals. John Glover plays a pair of brothers both from across the pond and one of them has the disease full blown now. One brother is an acid tongued thing with no kind words for anybody. The other has come from Great Britain seeking better treatment for the disease. Mr. Acid tongue has brought dancer/hustler Randy Becker along for some personal enjoyment. But Becker likes what he sees in another guest the blind Justin Kirk brought to the weekends by his partner Stephen Bogardus.It all makes for some interesting theater and a lot is revealed about one and all.Love! Valour! Compassion! ran 248 performances on Broadway in 1995 and won a Tony Award for its author Terrence McNally. It's a lot like a Eugene O'Neill play, short on plot per se, but long and deep on the characterizations. McNally was quite the acute observer of the gay scene, I've seen all of these people one time or other in my life.The film is also like the film adaption of the Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey Into Night where the house itself and the Connecticut beach location almost becomes a character in itself in the film. Here the Quebec woods stand in for the Hudson River Valley country and they stand in well.I don't think you could do much better than a film that's a combination of Boys In The Band and Long Day's Journey Into Night. That is in fact what Love! Valour! Compassion! is.The only thing that puzzles me is how director Joe Mantello handled John Glover playing twins on stage.

lambiepie-2 I am a huge fan of much of Terrance McNally's work and I remember back in 1994 when this play was staged at MTC in New York. It was a compassionate ensemble piece with a group of gay friends, vacationing throughout the summer at their choreographer friends' lovely lakeside home. What you catch onto quickly as well is this is not just about these friends getting together for fun times during the major summer holidays, but by the end of the summer, they are to do an AIDS-benefit performance of 'Swan Lake' that the choreographer was to stage.Within this, you'll see the workings of the human opinion in this set of friends...or in one case, so-called friend. While the backdrop is about the staging and performance of these friends doing 'Swan Lake' for the AIDS benefit performance - tutus and all - you get to see the personalities of each about the subject. Buzz, opting to hide his HIV status while faced with one who could not.The character development is good in the play, and much transfers to film - the stand out brilliance is of the English twins - played both by John Glover - portraying evil twin and lovable twin. Both who are gay, one in the final stages of AIDS who came to America for treatment and is the most endearing person you ever could meet, and the other one you just want to tie in a sack and throw into an ocean because he's so mean and callous. The character of 'Buzz' who wants to ignore his disease and pain behind singing and quoting Broadway Musicials and "being the life of the party" queen is a stellar performance as well.What I found interesting was the competition level between two other characters in this work. There is the choreographer who is the host - he's older and he's staging the "Swan Lake" performance; and a young 'buck' (Ramon) who's a dancer as well thinks he's immortal and a bronze Adonis gift to the gay male, always providing house tension and competition - not just in dance, but with the choreographer's blind partner(Bobby).As with many Terrance McNally's plays and screenplays, what'll grab you are the mind and personal feelings of the characters that's projected to the viewer and how they are adapting to the current events of the day. This film is no exception. For example, I find a wonderful exchange between the characters about a certain famous photograph that made me feel like a 'fly on the wall' as I listened - And not just that, it also touched heavily on how EVERYONE who knows about this famous photo was feeling at the time.That's the beauty of this film - you can take out "homosexual men" and replace them with "heterosexual women", "heterosexual men", "homosexual women" or a mix of all....and there would be very little change in the actions. But this is about a group of homosexual friends, their fears, their loves, their anguish, their humanity which is why I think the title Love! Valour! Compassion! does say it all.

nycritic Gay men have been around for years, in all forms, shapes, and sizes. Except on film. That was sacred ground where no sexual deviates dared rear their nasty head. And if they did, it was as the fall guy, the pervert, the weirdo with a lisp, the psycho-killer who had a thing for dresses. So when the zeitgeist of the 90s decided it was time to give "the gays" stories of their own, no one, it seemed, knew how to approach the material. It was all so risky, like walking on eggshells.It's so evident here as to cry for help. Setting myself aside from the praise pretty much everyone and their mother have given Terrence McNally for coming up with this "un-fabulous" story, I don't buy it. I don't get it. I don't even believe in it -- that's how strongly I feel against this movie that somehow became a hit if a dated hit. It reeks of fabricated fake. I can't identify with a story that whacks me on the top of my head like an angry stick trying to troll for prizes as it tries to let me in on the miles of angst these people spew out. Especially when it revolves on clichés and a predictable setup involving two of the most stereotypical characters ever to grace a story: the Latino sex-bomb and the fey disabled man, so sweet you want to club him.Sure, the times gave it its importance, the people who saw it -- gay men among them -- were more than validated, and everyone was happy. I for one, was not. Not partaking in self-pitying, self-loathing, womanly emotions gone to hell, and the need for excessive, over the top drama, I saw it for what it was -- a dated story closer to the spirit of the 80s, i. e. LONGTIME COMPANION -- and moved on to the next flick. And hoped never to fall for manipulative melodramas such as this hypocritical, soulless, un-recommendable movie.

sherlock_2040 A very powerful and moving story, particular the relationship between Buzz and James; both dying of AIDS and both in love.Very well acted and incredibly moving, especially when happy-go-lucky musical loving Buzz begins to break and confesses how he really sees things.It may not be real life, but you could believe that these characters exist. The script is good, as are most scripts based on plays AND adapted by the original writer. I would be very inspired to actually see this performed."I am sick and tired of straight people, there are just too many of them. I was in a bank the other day, they were everywhere writing cheques, two of them were applying for a morgage, it was disgusting."