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Chris and Don: A Love Story
Directed by Tina Mascara and Guido Santi; with Don Bachardy.
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Documentaries are often well-meaning. That's not a compliment. Gay and lesbian documentaries, in particular, often suffer under the twin burdens of being both good for us and politically necessary.

Consider last year's For the Bible Tells Me So -- a look at American religion and homosexuality (Forthebibletellsmeso.org). Filmmaker Daniel Karslake presented his huge topic in the most positive, least complicated light, so that the work ended up diffuse and vague. Despite some powerful moments of personal testimony, the documentary was unaffecting.

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Not so for Chris and Don: A Love Story, also released in 2007. The couple in question are Christopher Isherwood, the noted British-born novelist, and his much younger lover, artist Don Bachardy. The film charts their life together through use of old personal films, recollections of friends, photos, and letters read-out-loud. The centerpiece is interviews with the now 74-year-old Bachardy (Isherwood died in 1986).

Chris and Don documents one of the great intergenerational love stories of our time. When they met on February 14, 1953, the 49-year-old Isherwood and the 18-year-old Bachardy and fell in lust and love. And who wouldn't have? Bachardy was gorgeous and attracted to the writer, who was already world famous for his books. These included The Berlin Stories, which would become the play and film I Am a Camera and then the play and film Cabaret. The two men remained together for 33 years.

Despite occasional sentimental lapses, the film looks unflinchingly at the complicated texture and weave of the men's relationship. The directors don't shy away from any of the complications, intrigues, emotional troubles with which couples almost inevitably grapple. Here, however, there were some unique twists. Chris had slept with Don's older gay brother before they met. A more enduring condition of their coupledom was how Don inevitably fell into the shadow of a more famous lover, whose life was filled with famous friends. Bachardy and the filmmakers treat these issues sympathetically. Bachardy, in particular, brings to the narrative a wonderful sense of humor as well as good sense -- maybe aided by the wisdom of hindsight, as he relates events dating back sometimes half a century.

Perhaps the most moving part of the film comes when Bachardy tells of nursing Isherwood through five years of suffering with prostate cancer. It's a commentary on gay love and death that has nothing -- and everything -- to do with the AIDS epidemic. During Isherwood's last days, Bachardy drew numerous portraits of his companion. We see them here, and they glow with intimacy and love.

Filmmakers Tina Mascara and Guido Santi are never judgmental -- about the age difference, the out-of-relationship sex, the petty vanities, and the sometimes high-strung artistic temperaments. Chris and Don: A Love Story is a remarkable one-of-a-kind film that celebrates homosexual bonding while it inspires optimism for the future of the gay doc.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com