‘Love!’ A Day-To-Day Slice Of Gay Relationships

Combine the classic gay study “Boys in the Band” with that paen to Baby Boomer nostalgia, “The Big Chill,” and you’ve got Joe Mantello’s new film “Love! Valour! Compassion!”

Based on the Tony Award-winning play by Terence McNally, the Mantello-directed film involves three consecutive summer-weekend meetings between seven - and then eight - gay men on an country estate north of New York City.

A curious collection of friends, acquaintances and outright antagonists, the men joke, laugh, eat and drink, cry and rage at one another as, gradually, they all reveal their frustrations, hopes, dreams and fears.

How much you like this film likely will depend first of all on how sure you are of your own sexuality. If tales of the gay life disturb you, worse yet if they threaten you, then you probably should take a pass.

But even if you’re comfortable with gay comedy/drama, there’s room to criticize this adaptation of an obvious stage play.

I say obvious because even though the film has been opened up, it still has that talky, enclosed feel of a play put on the big screen. Very little is done, but a lot sure is said.

Mostly it is a study of characters in relationship to one another. There is the monogamous couple, Perry (Stephen Spinella) and Arthur (John Benjamin Hickey), who love each other but still are prey to the pressures of being role models.

Their opposite would be John (John Glover) and Ramon (Randy Becker), a coupling of opposites - a misanthropic and aging composer with a hard-body young dancer. And in between, we have Gregory (Stephen Bogardus), our narrator/host, and his blind partner Bobby (Justin Kirk).

All by himself, in a role played onstage by Nathan Lane, is HIV-infected Buzz (Jason Alexander of television’s “Seinfeld”).

There is an incestuous feel to the group, what with some of the men - Buzz and John, for example - having once been paired off. That feel is compounded when John’s saintly-but-ailing brother James (also played by Glover, who seems to be doing an impersonation of Kate Hepburn), joins the gang.

There is little progression to the plotline, other than the same kind of minuscule progression that happens in day-to-day real life. And there’s a consequent lack of character development - except for the two men facing the killer plague.

And it’s easy to feel frustrated at the constant back-biting that takes place between these men, especially the bile emanating from the morose John and the boorish behavior of the sexually predatory Ramon. In anything other than a play, would this particular group remain together for more than five minutes? Not likely.

But there are some clever lines.

“Are you alone?” Buzz is asked. “No,” he replies from a small room, “I have Michael J. Fox in here.”

When he awakens from a nap, Buzz says, “I was having a musical-comedy nightmare. They were doing a remake of ‘West Side Story’ with Robert Goulet and Cher.”

And the tender moments, when they come, do emphasize the more gentle, needy sides of these characters. It is then that their basic humanity, and the love they feel, is most clearly revealed.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Love! Valour! Compassion!” *** Locations: Magic Lantern Cinemas Credits: Directed by Joe Mantello, starring Jason Alexander, Randy Becker, Stephen Bogardus, John Glover, John Benjamin Hickey, Justin Kirk, Stephen Spinella Running time: 1:55 Rating: R