Making Love is a precious piece of cultural history, filmed between the beginnings of the tentative exploration of homosexuality as a mainstream socio-sexual role, and the onset, soon after, of the AIDS epidemic, which shut this exploration down.

Bart (a knockout Harry Hamlin) is a successful young writer. He lives by himself, and likes sex with no strings. Footloose and fancy free. Bart's well-off, self-reliant and confident: he doesn't need anyone for anything, and he likes playing the field.

So, when he meets Zach (Michael Ontkean), a young married doctor, he's in it for the fun. Trouble is, dreamy Zach’s expecting romantic long-term commitment, a state he has become quite used to during his marriage to loyal, intelligent Clair (Kate Jackson).

The movie centres around Zach's dilemnas, but disappointingly it's his two lovers that become the focus, partly through Zach's inherent passivity, and partly through the inventive use of "interviews" with Bart and Clair, little straight-to-the-camera vignettes which begin the film, and then pop up periodically throughout. We learn a lot about Bart and Clair's feelings during these odd segments, and a lot about the acting abilities of Hamlin and Jackson too. (Hamlin is, in my opinion, far superior).

The downside to this technique is that we become desperate to hear Zach's side of the story - his reactions, his feelings. His exclusion from the interviews pushes him to the background of the film, and this is a problem, being as he is the protagonist, and by far the most (potentially) compelling character.

But the telemovie story and contrived structure of Making Love are beside the point, and just containers for the fascinating, AIDS-eve cultural time capsule that makes this film, in new-millenium retrospect, a winner.

For the pop-culture buff, standout scenes include Bart’s trip to the doctor, for examination of a mysteriously enlarged lymph gland. I'm not sure if this was thrown in at the last minute, a timely reference to "GRID", but, if it wasn't, it has to be the single most prescient scene in motion picture history. Look too for an exterior scene involving Zach and Bart having a conversation under a partially obscured sign for a HEARING AIDS shop - as they chat, the word “AIDS” hangs squarely between their heads.

There's a lovely whimsy through the film it's surprisingly sensual and free of the stakeholding needs that came after AIDS. We see the two guys tongue kiss, and wake up nude in bed together - the gay sex isn't problematic here, it's up front, and matter of fact. Hamlin's Bart is a sexy and bright gay guy, not a walking placard. Zach’s dilemmas are framed as personal, emotional, not matters for group meeting discussions at the council hall. Compare this to the talky, frigid Philadelphia, which was made over ten years, and one AIDS epidemic, later.

The AIDS epidemic exponentialised the politicisation of gay culture, which has become saturated with castrating ideological and moral commentaries. In the pre-AIDS Making Love, we get a trio of complex adults caught in an all-gender love triangle. This film makes no connection between sexuality and civic politics - its characters aren’t doing it for the community, or braying about their lifestyle, they’re doing it in private, for themselves.



The rich but truncated period of American culture of the very early eighties, which seemed so anxious to examine new possibilities ofgender relations and sexuality and spewed out intelligent, fabulous films like a Catherine Wheel (Terms Of Endearment, The World According To Garp, Tootsie) is an often ignored victim of the AIDS epidemic. Making Love is like one of its lonely orphans.