Tidy Endings

Released in 1988, this was apparently HBO’s first-ever gay themed TV film. It was adapted from a play, and you can tell almost immediately, since nearly all of it unfolds in an apartment with two people talking through their grief and arguing over whether that grief belongs equally to both of them.
The story begins after the death of a man named Colin. His ex-wife Marion, who spent more than a decade with him, and his lover Arthur, who stayed at his side during the brutal last months of his life with AIDS, meet in the loft they have each inherited half of under Colin’s will and now have to sell. From there, the two sit with old resentments and fresh ones, orbiting each other, making confessions, and gradually trying to process a loss neither quite knows how to bear. Marion discloses that she has also been infected with the virus. Arthur, understandably, though also somewhat selfishly, wants to believe his grief is the more valid one. They’re both shattered, and both need somewhere to direct the blame. Yet as more comes out and their defenses lower a little, the dynamic between them changes, and the tension slowly gives way to understanding and the start of a genuine friendship.
What I appreciated was how little the film tries to make any of this big or dramatic. The characters respond as real people probably would: messily, inconsistently, and not always sympathetically. Both lead actors handle it well, and the writing captures how genuinely complicated relationships like these can be. Still, the constant back-and-forth between Marion and Arthur eventually starts to wear you down, not because the destination feels unconvincing, but because one of them takes forever to reach it. There is also the suggestion of a subplot involving their child growing up with divorced parents, one of whom is now openly gay and in a relationship, but it never really develops into much. Luckily, it comes in at just under an hour, so it never outstays its welcome.
Seen now, it plays more as a time capsule than anything groundbreaking, although who knows how much it may have pushed boundaries when it was first released. What sets it apart from other AIDS dramas of its era is that it avoids the medical and political noise, concentrating instead on the people left behind and quietly arguing for understanding and for unconventional family structures that aren’t always taken seriously. (5/10)