THE LIVING END

What do you have left to lose when your government has decided your life isn't worth saving? Gregg Araki's THE LIVING END takes the despair and fury of the AIDS crisis and turns them into a reckless declaration of war against straight America. Jon (Craig Gilmore) is a neurotic film critic who has just tested HIV-positive; Luke (Mike Dytri) is a reckless hustler with the same diagnosis and a considerably less accommodating attitude toward society. After a violent encounter with a homophobic cop, the two hit the highway in a stolen car, declaring war on a country that has already written them off. Shot for next to nothing and propelled by the music of the British post-punk underground, Araki's breakthrough feature is a landmark of New Queer Cinema, full of the rage and gallows humor of a generation watching its friends die while the government looked the other way. But the film's real achievement is the tenderness it discovers amid all that fury. Jon and Luke are terrible at being together, and they have no particular reason to believe things will get better. For a little while, at least, they have each other, a car, and the freedom to tell the rest of the world to go fuck itself.