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"Making Love" is a precious piece of cultural history, filmed during the narrow window of time between the tentative interest in exploring homosexuality as a valid socio-sexual role, and the onset, soon after, of the AIDS epidemic.

Bart (a knockout Harry Hamlin) is a successful young writer. He lives by himself, and likes sex with no strings. Not, though, because he's a screwed-up gay, but because he just prefers it that way. Bart's well-off, self-reliant and confident: he doesn't need anyone for anything, and he likes playing the field.

So, when he meets Zach (Michael Ontkean), a young married doctor, he's in it for the fun. Trouble is, ever-curious Zach's playing for keeps. Zach loves his wife, Clair (Kate Jackson), but doesn't want to live a lie.

The movie centres around Zach's dilemnas, but it's his two lovers that become the focus, partly through Zach's inherent passivity, and partly through an inventive use of "interviews" with Bart and Clair, which begin the film, and then pop in and out periodically. We learn a lot about Bart and Clair's feelings during these little segments, and a lot about the acting abilities of Hamlin and Jackson (Hamlin is, in my opinion, superior).

The downside to this technique is that we become desperate to hear Zach's side of the story - his reactions, his feelings. His exclusion from the interview format pushes him to the background of the film, and this is a problem, being as he is the protagonist.

But the story of "Making Love" is a minor point, and just a catalyst for the fascinating, AIDS-eve cultural drama that makes this film, in new-millenium retrospect, a winner.

Bart makes a trip to the doctor, for a suspiciously enlarged lymph gland. I'm not sure if this was thrown in at the last minute, a timely reference to "GRID", but, if it wasn't, has to be the single most prescient scene in motion picture history. In any case, this is the only connection between gay life and disease in the film. Bart, and the guys he meets at the bars, aren't malevolent, and neither are they hopeless.

We assume Zach is turned on physically by Bart, but his passion is driven by romance. He doesn't comment on the sex they have, but is pissed off when Bart is cold and unresponsive the next morning. We see the two guys tongue kiss, and wake up nude in bed together - the gay sex isn't problematic here, it's up front, and matter of fact. Compare this to the frigid "Philadelphia", which was made ten years, and one AIDS epidemic, later.

Homosexuality in the movies is now saturated with ideological and moral commentaries. Terrified of offending either gay groups or conservatives, film makers bleach the sexuality out of their gay characters until they become corporeal versions of C3-PO and R2-D2, reliable best friends or nattering clowns (see: "The Prince of Tides" or "The Object of My Affection"). In the pre-AIDS "Making Love", we get a trio of complex adults caught in an all-gender love triangle. This film makes no connection between sexuality and civic politics.

And that is what is most moving about watching the film today. To see how far backwards we have gone in personal and collective adult sexual and romantic relations was, for me, very unsettling. This film was controversial at the time, but at least it was made. Today, we get stuff like "Sleepless In Seattle", or, worse, "Sliding Doors".

The rich era of America in the very early eighties, which seemed so anxious to examine the possibilities of life, and spewed out intelligent, fabulous films like a Catherine Wheel ("Terms Of Endearment", "The World According To Garp", "Tootsie") is an often ignored victim of the AIDS epidemic. "Making Love" is like one of its lonely orphans.

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originally posted: 05/13/02 14:33:15
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