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.

I am rarely this severe. In fact, I usually am rather indulgent with movies dealing with gay themes, because there are so few of them. But this one takes the cake. I honestly haven't seen many films that bad in my life. Maybe The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was this bad. Anyway, back to THIS story. Wait, sorry, there IS no story. No plot. This is just some days in the life of people we don't care about, we never learn to care about, talking about things we don't care about and doing things not even them care about. This film is like a pathetic mix between Longtime Companion (for the AIDS theme and the "one day in the life of" idea) and The Boys in the Band (because... You know. 8 gay men, talking). But it takes the worst of both of these fantastic films and makes a cliché-filled, boring, dull movie out of it. And there you really realize that it takes, indeed, a lot of talent to write (whether in a screenplay or staged play) about characters that the audience doesn't know and make them interesting without a plot. After all, in TBITB or in Longtime Companion, there isn't much plot either, but the characters are interesting in and for themselves. You want to know more about them, you are moved by them and by what happens to them. TBITB is about ONE night in the life of some people, and still by the end of the movie I felt like I knew them. L!V!C! is about half a dozen days in the life of some people, and still in the end I don't know anything about them. I don't know what unites them - they're supposedly friends but they don't get along with each other -, I don't know what drives them - but I know they drive a Volvo -, and I don't even believe them. It isn't funny or witty - though it desperately tries to be - and it's not campy - even if one of them like musicals -. It's just cliché and and boring. Anyway, I really feel like I've lost 2 hours of my life by watching this movie. Thank god I saw it for free!

Adapted from a hit play by Terence McNally and utilizing most of the original stage cast, this film cannot hide its theatrical roots... nor should it.This is a sweet and sad story set against a perfect summer at a perfect country estate in upstate New York (?) that shows the lives of 8 gay men as they come to terms with AIDS, death, love, compassion, and the thin bonds of friendship that hold them together.Their summer idyll is a microcosm that, apart from the real world we never see, touches us all because it is their humanity that dominates this story. That one is a dancer, a lawyer, a choreographer, etc. is unimportant. They are 8 gay men whose lives are intertwined in love, valour, and compassion.Jason Alexander is very good in the Nathan Lane role, the portly man dying of AIDS who, late in life finds love. John Glover is brilliant (repeating his Tony-winning role) as twins: one a nasty hateful man; the other a sweet man whose death from AIDS is imminent. Stephen Spinella and John Benjamin Hickey are solid as the yuppie long-term couple. Stephen Bogardus is warm as the stuttering host, Justin Kirk is surprisingly good as the blind man, and Randy Becker is good as the Latino hunk whose causes so much trouble.The film is full of stereotypes and warm humor and terrific moments of truth. This is not a revolutionary film that tries to change the world, but it is a wise and bittersweet look at the lives of gay men in the time of AIDS, men whose lives are shattered (and ended) by a cruel and heartless disease.There's nothing earth-shattering here, no insights that make the lives of gay men clear and understandable to non-gays. But it is a work of great honesty and simplicity in showing 8 gay men as.... human beings.The scene, when the men go skinnydipping under a summer moon is beautiful in its complete innocence. No viewer can fail to understand their childlike glee in such a simple pleasure.This film is a must see just because it is not a strident, political rant against the horrors of AIDS. The characters, especially those played by Glover and Alexander, accept their fates with great dignity, humor, and valour. This film is a great tribute to all our victims of AIDS, and a silent condemnation to the society and politics that let it happen.

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.