Holding the Man

An Australian film adapted from a real life. Tim and John meet at school. One is in the school play, the other captains the football team, and both are fifteen. The relationship begins and does not stay hidden. When John's father finds out he takes his son to a psychiatrist; Tim's family carries it with a quiet discomfort. From there the film follows fifteen years. University, the move from Melbourne to Sydney, drama school, separations and returns. There is an attempt at an open relationship in the middle and the narrative does not sweeten it; that is the worst period between them. Then the 1980s arrive. The news about AIDS begins and the two are tested. What the narrative is interested in is not illness but continuity: the film shows fifteen years of a couple and makes you read the ending against them, and the illness only enters in the last third. The family line is the hardest part. Conflict comes over who decides in the hospital room, who may visit, and how the funeral will be held. The source is real. Timothy Conigrave wrote his memoir and the book was published after his death in 1995; both he and his partner John Caleo died of AIDS. The same text had been adapted for the stage earlier, and the screenplay was written by Tommy Murphy, who wrote that play. Ryan Corr, Craig Stott, Guy Pearce, Anthony LaPaglia, Sarah Snook, Kerry Fox and Geoffrey Rush are in the cast. Neil Armfield directed; he comes from the theatre. Who it is for: anyone interested in long-form relationship stories and the history of the epidemic in the 1980s. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take the last section; the film shows the course of the illness without hiding it.