Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

troyturton61 I still cry, every time I watch this movie. How cant you? Both for the subject matter, the lost loved ones and of course. The fact that to this day, gays are still hated & feared.

Jason Shaw Longtime Companion was perhaps one of the very first movies to put a face, heart and soul to the epidemic of HIV/AIDS at a time when movie makers as well as society as a whole, ran as fast as they could away from not only the disease itself, but also those that had it. For that, alone it should be congratulated and celebrated. Head on it tackled the issues without glitz or glamour and with an authentic honesty of emotion and interaction that is quite breath taking.Essentially, Longtime Companion is the story of how life takes a sudden change for a group of gay friends from the very onset of the whole HIV/AIDS crisis in 1981. Back then the New York Times carried an article that mentioned an outbreak of a 'rare cancer' in the gay community, often termed 'gay cancer' which was tragedy in itself as it shielded the actual method of transmission of the illness that was spreading with alarming speed. During the film we travel with the group of friends from the streets of New York to the hedonistic freedoms of Fire Island where the mentality of 'it couldn't happen to me' 'you can't catch a cancer' ruled the heads of many.Nobody was invincible and nobody was immune to the onslaught of this new horrific disease, which is exposed to the full in this highly charged and emotive film. Coming as it did in 1989/90 it was the first time that a vast majority of its audience had seen beyond the all too often misleading newspaper headlines, it was especially heart wrenching. There is not a particular plot line to follow, except watching with tear festooned eyes the lives of a whole circle of friends crumble and falter in the face of illness and death. There are few punches held back, nor emotions left unstirred as the action takes place at a reasonably fast pace. Many critics at the time had issues with the clinical approach of the piece, but those issues are unfounded and groundless. Longtime Companion gives a wonderful vent to the sense of confusion, misinformation and huge sense of loss that existed at the time. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we see how tragically accurate this was. I firmly believe this should have been mandatory viewing in secondary schools during the early nineties for the way in which it dealt with homosexuality, relationships, and the whole HIV/AIDS crisis from its early beginnings. It would have done so very much more than a pathetic iceberg and a strap-line of 'Don't die of ignorance' that was pretty much all the UK got in the way of warning and advice, One of the amazingly beneficial aspects of Longtime Companion is the matter of fact style of presentation was see the story unfold, some have even said it a shadow of 'documentary' which is no bad thing. We see the lives of men cut down in their prime, of devastated lovers and partners, of a whole community decimated and challenged, which was exactly the reality of the times. Read more and find out where this film made it in the Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time book, search on Amazon for Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time, or visit - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007FU7HPO

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU A historical film from the time when AIDS struck New York City right in the core of the big apple, its artistic community. It follows the plague from July 3, 1981 to July 19, 1889 and it shows how the community was disoriented and panicked by this unknown and unheard of disease.It took two years for the word AIDS to become common and to have the first gay kiss on a TV soap opera. They came out on the TV screen and caused more fear than surprise. Surprise would have been good in a way since people would have woken up without a hangover, but fear was the hangover.The film concentrates on the gay community and people close to it not on the people around, the rest of the society that did not behold but stigmatized. So we do not get the horrible rejection that the gay community lived through at the time. We only follow it from behind gay eyelids.Compassion at first meant there was some hope it could be stopped or cured with antibiotics or something. Then paranoia started settling in the minds like a real cancer in the psyche. It ate the souls and the thinking ability of everyone or nearly because it no longer was a disease but a disease that killed with certainty.The next stop was hypochondria. Gay men started checking themselves and believing they were every single one of them the next victims. They were the hosts of a morbid fascination that injected the death process of their friends into themselves. Morbid empathy that could kill the living spirit of anyone in no time. And yet little by little the tools of some resistance came up from the minds and hands of some volunteers. And It was needed because people with AIDS started being fired because they had no insurance and they found themselves in overcrowded hospitals that did not know how to cope with the problem and only checked more or less the insurance coverage every patient had or did not have and Medicaid was by far not enough even to accompany the beneficiaries to the end.And the absolute blank in which the gay community was for several years made most people unable to see how it was propagated, made them believe it was some kind of punishment or curse on the gay community from … What did he say Ronald Reagan at the time? It is not quoted in the film. So they punished themselves with "No sex please we may have AIDS." Or even worse "No kiss please, we may have the virus in our saliva." At this point the film goes down to rock bottom and touches it with the death of Sean slowly hypnotized into letting everything go and dying in peace, with no cry, without resisting, though not without tears and suffering at the loss this death meant for him and for the one he left behind. And David who accompanied him through his last night is buried in his turn fifteen months later and his friends tell him good bye in the church of his affiliation. And we are in June 1987. What the friends say from the pulpit is the first step out of the quagmire, the first step forward in the minds of the gay members of this gay community. And now they can start resisting and fighting back and requiring the treatment, health care, and that is necessary for the still living ones to be able to learn how to live with AIDS.Shows are organized to gather support for the sick people and the community, demonstrations are set up targeting the health services and the city hall of New York, the Mayor in particular. And they clash with the police, and they demonstrate again. "It seems inconceivable, does it? That there was ever a time before all this." When you start forgetting what the past was you start becoming able to look at the future and they did. Remembering is important but certainly not to nostalgically regret what it was.Three survivors are on the Atlantic beach and they get ready for the next demonstration and they speak of a cure and they want to be there when it happens. Then a vision of the whole crowd they used to be runs down onto the beach and they are all there, here, with the three survivors. The ghosts of course of those who have gone away, or maybe the three survivors are already ghosts meeting with those who went before them? A last shot comes back to the three survivors. They want to be there when a cure is found, and 25 years later a cure is still not found but you can live with AIDS, and rather quite many years now. Thanks to that first generation of pioneers.The film is from 1989. It was sad but also full of hope then and today it is still sad and still full of hope but we are convinced that even in catastrophic situations death is not the only one to win and it can even be defeated.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Armand It is difficult to definite this movie. At first sight it is a movie about AIDS and the impact of illness in gay community. In fact it is only a chronicle of a time of hope and fear, jokes and firelight. "Long time companion" is slice of Reagan era but a definition of the special vision about life. Small existences are parts of powerful chains of friendship and love. A newspaper's article shatters the peace of a community. Rumurs,anxiety, confusion. And a huge waiting. The shadow of "homosexual cancer" is present like ambiguous threat. The firs victims and the glamor of film : the compassion is form of fear but this status is source of resistance. A realistic touching way to describe the relation with illness and with others. I saw this film like the root of "Angels in America". Like a pleading not for tolerance (is it no a subtle form of hypocrisy?) but for the way of empathy. And the great merit of Norman Rene is the art to create a gorgeous gallery of winsome portraits, to present their everyday existence, the enjoys, sorrows, emotions, fight, mutual assistance. A very beautiful, intelligent and impressive movie.