Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the football team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years in the face of everything life threw at it – the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.
Holding the Man is a heartfelt and emotionally devastating Australian LGBT drama based on Timothy Conigrave's memoir. The acting, particularly from Ryan Corr and Craig Stott, is exceptional — raw, committed, and deeply affecting. The ending carries enormous emotional weight, landing with genuine devastation as AIDS takes its toll. The plot follows a somewhat familiar long-form romance arc, hitting expected beats of young love, separation, reconciliation, and tragedy, which keeps it from feeling truly groundbreaking in narrative terms. Cinematography is competent and period-appropriate but not especially distinctive. Novelty is moderate — while the Australian setting and source material give it some specificity, the AIDS-era gay romance genre has strong precedents, and the film doesn't radically reinvent the form.