It’s 1985 and a low-budget film, which takes only 9 days to make, charts the Aids crisis in the USA, the surrounding ignorance and lack of funding for Aids patients and their carers.
In its staggering 80 minutes Arthur J Bressan Jr’s Buddies concentrates on two men: one in the last days of his life in a hospital bed, and the other his “ buddy” , a volunteer who gets increasingly emotionally involved in the dying man’s story.
David Schachter is David, the slightly cold, detached gay man who has become a buddy and isn’t really sure why. Geoff Edholm is the patient Robert – at first appearing arrogant and casual about his past sex life but increasingly pained, isolated and angry.
Robert has been disowned long ago by his family and more recently by his past two partners – he’s not sure whether because they can’t cope with the outcome or because they feel guilty they may have been the transmitter.
Geoff gives the sick man a growing dignity and his expressions of outrage that no-one in Government or the media seems to care never lets up. David, at first apparently uncaring, even though he is copy-setting a book all about Aids, shows in the end that he just doesn’t get the lifestyle that Robert so courageously displays.
Showing Robert a video of San Francisco’s gay parade, David describes it as “ a tacky freak show “. He is happily partnered but clearly not at ease with a public show of his sexuality. Robert, on the other hand, is out there, militant, defiant and of course fatally ill at ease with his lack of future.
In the end there’s a much closer relationship between the two men – on the borders of a physical attachment – and when the inevitable happens, David is genuinely distraught.
The two central actors are the only ones really seen – other characters are voices off – and we grow to appreciate their characters in different ways. These are truly fine performances by two gay actors obviously fully committed to telling this true story.
The film is heart-rending, tearful and very very important to be seen by a generation who have largely grown up without the fear and ignorance that existed 30 years ago.
Bravo for Peccadillo Pictures for releasing it on dvd, blu-ray and VOD in the Uk for the first time.
It’s a hard watch but worth it.
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