Review of Longtime Companion (1989) by Edward B — 29 Oct 2009

Much was riding on this film because it was the first mainstream, widely released Hollywood films about the AIDS-HIV pandemic in America, a few independent films had come out earlier in the 1980s. The film largely lives up to the great expectations.

It follows a group of white middle class urban gay men from 1981 - 1989 as they deal with the deadly disease and the prejudice and lose that comes with it. Perhaps the only major complaint is that its only about how the pandemic impacts a particular class of gay men and largely ignores other gay men (or women) or the larger heterosexual population.