It's My Party

Nick (Roberts) is a Los Angeles architect, HIV-positive and now, says his doctor, suffering progressive brain lesions, giving him perhaps another ten days of consciousness. Time to implement Plan B: one final shindig with family and friends, at the end of which Nick will take an overdose, dignity intact. But he won't, or can't, invite Brandon (Harrison), his ex-lover with whom he parted acrimoniously after testing positive. Most of the film consists of Nick's two-day party, at which the ensemble cast mill around, joke and squabble, and gradually slide into a ruminative disconsolateness. Brandon too turns up, is first shunned, and finally makes his peace with Nick. Despite the occasional longueur, all this is quietly engaging. Still, for a weepie, let alone one about AIDS, it's peculiarly upbeat. The real traumas stay in flashbacks, to the death of other infected friends, or in photos arranged in testament on Nick's wall; even moments of frisson, as when Nick's estranged father appears unexpectedly, are kept to the edges of frame.