Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997)

Some thirty years after The Boys In The Band presented a view of gay male life that was before Stonewall, before AIDS, before Anita Bryant. A lot of history and a lot of heartache individually and collectively happened in this time. So Terrence McNally penned a work with another group of eight gay men and put them at a vacation home on a lake in Dutchess County, New York. The three holiday weekends they spend there reveal a lot about themselves.Hosts of the event are John Benjamin Hickey and Stephen Sellars a same sex couple who've been together for 15 years. Like so many in those years they've seen way too many of their friends die and one of those friends invited is Jason Alexander who is HIV+ positive who comes by himself. Alexander is almost a stereotype of a gay man who loves his Broadway musicals. John Glover plays a pair of brothers both from across the pond and one of them has the disease full blown now. One brother is an acid tongued thing with no kind words for anybody. The other has come from Great Britain seeking better treatment for the disease. Mr. Acid tongue has brought dancer/hustler Randy Becker along for some personal enjoyment. But Becker likes what he sees in another guest the blind Justin Kirk brought to the weekends by his partner Stephen Bogardus.It all makes for some interesting theater and a lot is revealed about one and all.Love! Valour! Compassion! ran 248 performances on Broadway in 1995 and won a Tony Award for its author Terrence McNally. It's a lot like a Eugene O'Neill play, short on plot per se, but long and deep on the characterizations. McNally was quite the acute observer of the gay scene, I've seen all of these people one time or other in my life.The film is also like the film adaption of the Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey Into Night where the house itself and the Connecticut beach location almost becomes a character in itself in the film. Here the Quebec woods stand in for the Hudson River Valley country and they stand in well.I don't think you could do much better than a film that's a combination of Boys In The Band and Long Day's Journey Into Night. That is in fact what Love! Valour! Compassion! is.The only thing that puzzles me is how director Joe Mantello handled John Glover playing twins on stage.

in any movie, no matter who the actors are, the script is very important to me , as it should be for everyone involved, especially the actors.This script, story, is so beautifully written..in the first lines"the sloping stairs " of that beautiful staircase..always takes me "home" to anytime in my life, when I felt safe, at home, wherever I was living or visiting at the time or whatever relationship I was in...it's truthful for most of the story...I just do not see a person with AIDS being accepted into the USA from the UK ..but all done for the story...and the stage version must have been just as incredible..it takes you from a beautiful summer, from several different couples, that have been invited to a a summer home in the wilderness(it seems), through several seasons and what happens at the end..allot happens in this story that spans lifetimes but done so beautifully

The writer of the current featured review, jotix100, thinks this movie "doesn't work." I beg to differ. What Love! Valour! Compassion! was onstage doesn't matter to this movie. The movie isn't being judged as a play. Those of us who never saw the play onstage could not care less how good or bad it was there. This movie does work. It's everything good jotix100 mentions and what he finds deficient from the play has no bearing, unless what you like to do is compare two good things just to discover which is the weakest. Enjoy this movie for the witty dialogue, the genuine rapport between all the performers, the beautiful setting and the magnificent John Glover. Whatever isn't there on the screen is irrelevant.

It's amazing the fate the great play by Terrence McNally suffered on its way to the movies. The fact that it's basically the same team that produced this moving theater piece at New York's Manhattan Theater Club and later transferred to Broadway with basically the same cast, and with the same director, Joe Mantello, doesn't give the film viewer any idea of what "Love, Valor, Compassion" was so effective on the theater in comparison what one watches this version on the screen.First, and foremost, the replacement of Nathan Lane, the originator of the role of Buzz was the first mistake. In fact, Jason Alexander, a good actor otherwise, throws away the balance of the film as he portrays Buzz. Mr. Alexander is out of his element in the movie. He seems to be acting in a different film, rather on this one.The rest of the brilliant cast is repeating the roles they originated on the play."Love, Valor, Compassion" deals with a lot of serious topics in a matter of fact way. AIDS is at the center of the story as this group is affected deeply in one way, or another, by the plague that is killing most of these men gathered at a summer house. There is also a subtext in the movie about relationships, friendship, and loyalty.John Glover playing the twin brothers, John, and James, gives one of his best performances in this picture. Mr. Glover is an actor who has a long background in both theater and films and he is a welcome addition to anything he decides to grace with his presence.Stephen Spinella and John Benjamin Hickey, are Perry and Arthur, a gay couple that has managed to stay together fourteen years, a record for this type of life where relationships tend not to last at all. Stephen Bogardus and Justin Kirk, are Gregory and Bobby, the host of the house and his sweet blind lover. Randy Becker plays Ramon, who appears to be a hustler and has been brought as a guest and ends up betraying his companion and the host.Finally, the fact the film doesn't work rests with the direction of Joe Mantello, an excellent theater director for casting the wrong man in a key part in the movie and perhaps his unfamiliarity working in films.