Making Love

Arthur Hiller, who directed Love Story, directed Making Love. Now, I have known about this movie for many, many years as an early gay movie (1982!), but I'd never seen it because I assumed it was going to be a) mostly a soap opera and b) kinda homophobic. It wasn't really either of those things.

Instead it's a beautifully realized, nuanced film about three very different people. It's a romantic drama in the truest, most serious sense, and it isn't really even melodramatic. It's almost sensible. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it has a great supporting performance by Dame Wendy Hiller. Actually, all the actors are very good, and Harry Hamlin has a great part as the stud Bart who doesn't want a relationship. Most importantly, this is not a homophobic film, and it isn't sex-negative either.

Before I say anything else, I think it is also important to say that Michael Ontkean, who plays the film's lead, is dreamy as all hell. Kate Jackson is gorgeous. And Harry Hamlin is very, very sexy in this.

I think the most extraordinary section of Making Love is this insane sequence when the wife finds a matchbook from the gay bar with an address written inside it and decides to go to the address, announce herself as the husband of this man, and then ask the man a bunch of questions about her husband. The man, of course, knows nothing about this guy. He slept with him once. There is literally a tub of vaseline in the shot, just sitting on this guy's end table while he talks to her. But she asks him a whole bunch of questions including: Are you happy? He just looks at her and says, "Yeah. I get mad when I'm stuck in traffic; I don't like to pay my bills; I eat well; I live my life. I'm as happy as the next person." It's just a stunning sequence. Making Love is a film that actually wants to emphasize the idea of gay happiness, that being gay does not equate to being miserable. Happiness is actually possible for the gay men in Making Love. It's a really surprising film in so many ways.