A Year Without Love (Un año sin amor), directed by Anahí Berneri, is a based on an autobiographical novel by Argentinian Pablo Pérez (played by Juan Minujín), a thirty-year-old gay writer who has recently returned home to Buenos Aires from Paris with AIDS after his partner dies of the disease. The film begins in April 1996, when his CD4 count has fallen just below 400. He refuses to take AZT, then the prescribed regimen for those with AIDS, despite a lot of coughing that might indicate a serious condition. His father (played by Ricardo Merkin) is paying the rent for his apartment, which he shares with a fortysomething aunt (played by Mimí Ardú) who has mental problems. He derives income primarily by tutoring in and translating from French, a part-time job. With time on his hands, he is on the prowl for sex--at gay bars, through ads in gay publications, and later through email. As a result of email, he meets Báez (played by Osmar Núñez), a leather daddy named The Sheriff who organizes orgies at his apartment, where he falls for Martín, a twentysomething hunk (played by Javier Van der Couter) who looks hot as a leather master. Indeed, there are several sizzling scenes of leather and mild whipping in the middle of the film. Having found someone he can love, his outlook improves. When his CD4 count falls to 100 in August, he takes advantage of the newly available "cocktail" of antiretroviral medicines, and his next CD4 count skyrockets. Meanwhile, he has been keeping a diary of his life during the year, believing that he had very little time to live. Now that his vigor has returned, he transforms the diary into a novel, "A Year Without Love," in which he writes about his life though fictionalizing his relatives. One day he returns home to find his father, who is obviously upset. The novel's contents were so brutally frank about his aunt that she has complained to his father, who in turn tells him that he will no longer support him. Pablo must, therefore, collect his possessions and join the ranks of the homeless in Buenos Aires. When the film ends, he has checked into a room at a gay bathhouse, leaving filmviewers puzzled as to his fate or perhaps awaiting a sequel. Despite the melodrama of the story, however, the situation is quite believable, providing a portrait of contemporary AIDS victims who have a longer lease on life but have paradoxically exhausted the sympathy of those who once pitied them. MH
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