An Early Frost Review!!!
SYNOPSIS: Set in the mideighties, lawyer Michael Pierson (Aidan Quinn) has contracted the AIDS virus. After a blowup with his boyfriend of two years, he returns home to tell his family the truth: he is gay and has AIDS. When his sister and father both reject him, it falls to mother Katherine (Gena Rowlands) to not only bring the family back together but also to make sure Michael knows he is loved.
SYNOPSIS: By today's standards, An Early Frost is preachy, melodramatic, scattershot, stereotypical, cliched and archane. However, it helps to remember this movie debuted on network television in 1985, years before Will and Grace, Queer as Folk...hell, before And the Band Played On over on HBO and Philadelphia hit the movie screen. An Early Frost wants to do so many different things within the context of 100 minutes it's almost unfathomable.
Simultaneously, this made for TV movie wants to tackle homosexuality, a split family, suicide, AIDS, social prejudices, cheating and coming together. No television movie could ever handle all those topics successfully and Frost is no exception. But the material on screen is remarkable considering the time. While we never see Peter and Michael kiss or demonstrate they are a gay couple, the word is spoken several times, as well as the personally reviled "lover". There is open acceptance by Michael's mother and grandmother toward his condition while his father and sister initially shun him. There is a paranoia about AIDS and, considering what we know now, the ideas seem positively caveman-ish. The sister is afraid her unborn baby will contract the disease if she sees Michael. His father doesn't want him to kiss his mother.
Whatever problems the production might have (among them the cliches and stereotypes), it should be lauded for what it sets out to do. It does, unfortunately, reduce gay men to the overused stereotype of people with AIDS; it reduces "grown ups" to cold, unfeeling, uninformed and bigoted people; and it does paint gay men as cheaters. (That's the one problem I have with this film that isn't tied to the time it was made: Peter, after admitting he cheated on Michael because he was "never around", doesn't try to make any amends. In fact, Michael goes back to to him at the end. What possibly good does that do for anyone? It shows a gay man who is so desperate for companionship he'll go back to the person who essentially killed him.)
The plot jerks around from story to story a little too much for my liking and the story seems too truncated. However, all that aside, this is a piece of entertainment history. Not the most flattering piece or the best produced, but important nonetheless.