Parting Glances (1986)

I almost don't know where to start. Bill Sherwood's Parting Glances is a film about a long evening when a man says goodbye to his lover – who is moving to East Africa for work. The bulk of the film is a party, where we hang out with the man's friends and get a veritable snapshot of gay New York in 1985. Much of the film discusses HIV by not discussing HIV, but it's present in almost every frame of the film. I found Parting Glances deeply, wonderfully moving, and I really loved its quirkiness and its sadness. This would pair nicely with one of Gregg Araki's strange movies from this period. Parting Glances is much more grounded than Araki's work, but he's speaking a similar language. Kathy Kinney is magnificent in this, but the entire cast, really, is stellar.