Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

guilfisher-1 This 2000 made for TV film is a sham for gay people. It promotes gay bashing, degrades coming out and gives homosexuals a dated persecuted life style. I could have sworn when I saw this trite work, it must have been done in 1960. For certainly gay issues deserve better than this dribble. The fault lies in the writing and directing. Mark Burt writes a trivial and lack-less script with absolutely no compassion for any of the major characters. Aisling Walsh, a woman, directs with no understanding of how to bring any hope to her leading players. She certainly has no understanding of gay life. If she herself is gay, than shame on her. If not, she needs to go to a gay bar or march in a gay pride day parade and surround herself with today's gay people.The actors do what they can to give believability to this nonsense. Steve John Shepherd plays the young man tortured over his homosexuality. Afraid to come out to his best friend and to his parents. Why he chooses to do so in such a public way, beats me. But he does. I'll say no more as to the outcome and let you see for yourself. Believe me, you won't be surprised. John Simm, hardly, in my eyes, worth all the suffering, is the attraction to Shepherd as his best friend. Simm has his own demons to deal with. And again, you really don't care. He earns his oats. As the unsympathetic and sometimes just down right annoying girl-friend to Simm, Laura Fraser is a real possessive bitch (can I say that word?) A control freak, she deserves losing any guy who would put up with her antics and games. I was hoping she'd lose the guy in the end. Again, see what happens yourself. Again, no surprise.Then there are the parents that contradict themselves all over the place. An overbearing dad, played by Maurice Roeves, knows nothing but anger and screams through most of the film. What's with this guy? Sometimes overacting, he suddenly has all this tear jerking at the end? And you don't believe it anyway. "Let him go", says he. I would have been gone from this dad a long time ago. And the mother, played by Ger Ryan, sits and bakes pies. Probes her son most of the time to see what's wrong and when she discovers the truth, over public TV, completely disowns him. She begs him to be honest and then slaps him in the face. Give me a break.I liked Shepherd's work in this and wish he could have had a decent venue to work with. For he gave the most convincing performance. Simm was one level, Fraser was just awful as were the parents.I give this dated movie a 2 star for Shepherd's performance attempt.

baker-9 "Forgive and Forget" will certainly generate mixed feelings. The central character of David, a closeted working class guy who's desperately in love with his best pal Theo, is interesting in that David becomes the equivalent of a jealous lover when Theo gets increasingly serious about his new GF Hanna (who's not so different from David in some respects). A jealous lover who has to conceal his feelings, which leads David to some actions that are less than sympathetic. While the film tries to show how David is suffering, the script and the lead actor rarely succeed is making David both wrong-headed but sympathetic. He glowers so much and is so clammed up emotionally that he almost becomes a villain. Theo really is the most sympathetic character in the film, a man victimized by his unreasonable GF and betrayed by his best friend.(Spoiler alert): The penultimate scene on a TV show called "Forgive and Forget" is unbelievable to me. Even given David's need to tell Theo how he feels, it's hard to believe that someone as closeted as David would come out in such a public, spectacular way. The writer and director don't build David's character in a way where such a gesture seems inevitable. And the film never thinks to explore why the TV show would cooperate with such a surprise admission.The ending has upset viewers - frankly, I didn't believe Theo to be the type to engage in such brutal behavior. And the Hanna's sudden appearance to stop Theo from inflicting further damage to David made no sense at all, given that she and Theo had already broken up. Given David's actions it's easy to interpret the beating as David getting what he deserved for betraying his pal...and for daring to fall in love with a straight man and humiliate him by declaring that to him on TV. I can certainly imagine many hetero men readily taking that away from the film, especially as we see Theo and Hanna walking away hand-in-hand leaving David laying on the floor to fend for himself - not even asking if he's OK. As for the last shot of David, who can say what it means? He's learning how to move on? He's still in a dream world?Anyone familiar with the gay-related murder that resulted from a similar occurrence on the Jenny Jones Show will wonder just what the filmmakers intended here. I understand that the writer of this film makes special mention that he's straight, so you never know.

Bobbikins Reyes I would like to believe that there are more closet gays than gays who are open about their sexuality but I do not have the statistics to prove it. Whether you are open, or not, or about to open, this film will somehow touch you. I like this film so much that I can relate to it. The love story of straight-acting David that has been told so many times but presented in a realistic way is enough to catch my attention. A gay who is in love secretly with his best friend for so many years is nothing but ordinary plot because that is always the case when a straight-acting gay fall for a straight guy. I knew beforehand that the ending of the story would not be a happy one because normally in real life a straight guy would not return the affection of a gay even if that gay is his best friend for so many years. Oh yes! This is the truth! The ending of the love story of David is so credible that makes me watch this film again to remind me that this kind of love does exist, and once you came out of the closet, you are taking a big risk. The acting of David as portrayed by Steve John Shepherd is superb! No doubt, he is so convincing as a straight-acting gay. In fact, I fell for him after watching the film.

synergistic Note: contains spoiler.... 'Forgive and Forget' is on balance, more forgettable than forgivable. Made for Scottish Television (and a boring, Scot version of a BBC drama) by a married female director from a screenplay by a hetero male film student and starring a hetero actor (get a clue here!), the story goes on interminably about how a working class Brit is hopelessly in the closet and jealous of his best mate's live-in girlfriend, whom he's out to undercut by exploiting her paranoia and dislike of his male camaraderie with her boyfriend. It's the British version of a Jerry Springer mentality in the working class subculture which leads, inexorably, to a disastrous coming out on a true-confessions-type TV show called (would you believe) 'Forgive and Forget.' What's sad is that our hero is so naive (and hopelessly inarticulate) that he thinks coming out to his romantic interest on TV will somehow produce a happy ending. No way, Jose. Hetero Sex Object wields a lead pipe and almost kills the guy before girlfriend, appearing miraculously just in time to stop him from murder, leads hetero heartthrob off stage (and, we imagine, to a 'happily ever after'). By this point, since she's already dumped him, she's almost a deus ex machina, and her appearance has no motivation except to save male heterosexuality from life imprisonment (where, no doubt, he would be forced to become some macho guy's 'sex object'). Sorry, but I really didn't like the 'film' (shot on video, no less), including the videography, which was brightly lit and boringly, competently uninteresting. Next time, I'll think twice about believing the hype (here's a clue: the video retailer--whose blurb rating the film I didn't question--is also the film's distributor) and give a movie the old eyeball before showing it to my friends. If you want a far better, and yet more gritty story of coming out in a British working class context, try 'Beautiful Thing'.