Chris & Don: A Love Story.

"There are many reasons to see [Chris & Don: A Love Story]," writes Dan Callahan at the House Next Door, "but the best one I can think of is the chance to see [Christopher] Isherwood and his best friend WH Auden, probably the greatest poet of the 20th century, jumping around together like middle-aged schoolboys in beguiling home movie footage. There is the opportunity to hear [Don] Bachardy hold forth about a scary drug experience with Paul Bowles in Tangier, and some hilarious anecdotes about visiting the set and working as an extra on The Rose Tattoo with Anna Magnani. But mainly this is a chance to get acquainted with the exemplary work and life of two great artists, one dead, one living, utterly and touchingly and romantically indivisible."

Updated through 6/13.

"The 30-year difference between an upper-crust British writer and a young Californian glamour-hound was just one of the difficulties facing the pair in the 1950s, yet the strength of their love through the ups and downs of a relationship that blossomed for three decades was what kept them together up to Isherwood's death in 1986, and what makes Chris & Don: A Love Story one of the most positive, affecting portrayals of queer romance in recent memory," writes Fernando F Croce in Slant.

Screened at Newfest on Saturday; rolls out across the US throughout the summer.

Trailer. And more reviews.

Update, 6/10: "While in description, a documentary focusing on the experiences of one pair of lovers might sound hermetic, Chris & Don comes across as remarkably expansive; rarely is love depicted onscreen with this much soul-rattling care," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "While [Tina] Mascara and [Guido] Santi easily could have used Chris and Don's decade-spanning romance as a launching pad into considerations of contemporary domestic human rights issues, they wisely let it speak for itself, and let us hopefully follow by example."

Updates, 6/11: "The terms on which the couple set up house not only reach back to the most ancient manifestations of queer coupling (the older man taking a younger partner under his wing, schooling him on life, culture, and sex), but also illustrate lingering issues with—or even within—the modern gay and lesbian community," notes Ernest Hardy in the Voice. "[I]t might be a good thing for gays and straights to glean some lessons from Isherwood and Bachardy's example: Make your own rules, set your own terms for connection, and be willing to let them evolve as you and your partner hopefully do."

Writing in the L Magazine, Mimi Luse finds the doc " a tender (albeit somewhat hokey) double portrait."

Updates, 6/12: "Chris & Don doesn't fully address the merits (and critical reaction to) either Isherwood or Bachardy's work, and though this omission is clearly designed to afford greater concentration on their romance, it nonetheless stands out simply because few other corners of their lives are left unexplored," writes Nick Schager at Cinematical. "Still, Mascara and Santi burrow so deeply into the constantly metamorphosing emotions between the two, as well as how their art reflected those feelings, that such stumbles prove minor.... Even more than unwavering dedication, however, what the film ultimately locates in the saga of Isherwood and Bachardy - two men so harmoniously intertwined that, as old photos and home movies convincingly establish, they began to sound, think, act and view the world in the same way - is the much-coveted, seldom attained fantasy of becoming one with a true love."

Armond White in the New York Press on Derek and Chris & Don: "These gay documentaries show more loving than today's gay film fiction."

Updates, 6/13: "The elderly Mr Bachardy makes a wonderful character," writes Steve Dollar in the New York Sun. "Still trim in a white sleeveless T-shirt and painter's pants, his silver hair wispy above a face that retains a good bit of the chiseled features of his youth, he leads the camera around the home he shared with Isherwood, opening up boxes of memories with an emotional transparency that shows the enduring value of his commitment to Isherwood. It's something lovely and rare."

Notes Stephen Holden in the New York Times: "In this pre-Stonewall era Isherwood's increasingly acute political consciousness led him to make 'the treatment of the homosexual a test by which every political party and government must be judged.'"

Posted by dwhudson at June 9, 2008 10:06 AM