What do you say during the morning after? Small talk? Lies? What morning after - you left straight away? If you're anything like me, you'll be amazed by these two guys, who use the morning after to uncover themselves and each other, in a ninety minute conversation that never misses a beat.

Together Alone barrels along covering every conceivable point of contention that might arise between two gay guys with different views on AIDS, committment, and casual sex. If one is married, how does he feel about possibly transmitting HIV to his wife? When you play the passive role in sex, does that mean you play the passive emotional role as well? Should casual sex be cold, and anonymous, or is it evidence of a deeper connection between two people, and worth more respect?

Interesting questions, but too many at once, and too dryly presented. The script has no subtext - it doesn't dramatise it's questions, just puts them into the mouths of the characters, and has them ask each other directly. We find the characters start to pre-empt our own responses, and mouth them at the same time we are thinking them.

The film is very stagey - set in one room, and featuring only two characters, who drive the narrative with their conversational dialogue. When it gets boring, it's not because of this format, but because you start to feel like you're at a self-help seminar, where the actors are performing a dramatisation.

In such a seminar, a convenor would call a stop every ten minutes or so, and open a discussion of what was just seen. People would throw in their own accounts, and agree or disagree with the characters' decisions and points of view. Then, after key points were recorded on a whiteboard, the actors would play out the next scene, and another discussion would follow, and so on, break for lunch at 1pm.

In this way, the film does have a real intimacy, for you feel like the characters are really in the room with you, participating in an interesting discussion. But it is equally impersonal, for the characters don't know you're there, and talk only to each other.

The dialogue is good - never preachy, astonishingly, and the sparring between the characters is fluid and beleivable. The way they talk, and the subjects they cover, are never clangy or dull. It just gets a little repetitive after the first half an hour. And divvying up every single gay/bi issue and identity between two characters results in overload - the characters don't seem like real people, but more like a procession of well-written magazine articles.

As a film, it's just too earnest. Does anyone really talk like this, with this kind of articulation, clarity and purpose - and find their partner reciprocates - the morning after casual sex?

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