‘Parting Glances’: the foundational movie that changed queer cinema
The term may not have been officially coined until the early 1990s, but writer and director Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances was nonetheless instrumental in helping to lay the foundations for what would ultimately be dubbed as the ‘New Queer Cinema‘ movement.
It was academic and film scholar B Ruby Rich who first used the phrase to describe the influx of LGBTQ+ movies that told stories from the perspectives of their characters, unburned by Hollywood’s typical hesitance towards subject matter that was still viewed as something of a societal taboo at the time.
Todd Haynes’ Poison, Laurie Lynd’s RSVP, Derek Jarman’s Edward II, and Gregg Araki’s The Living End were all released in quick succession between 1991 and 1992 to signal there was a genuine shift in cinematic sentiment coming, but Parting Glances had arrived years beforehand to help usher in the change.
Grounding itself in a tangible reality that people could identify with and relate to, it was one of the first mainstream films to tackle the subject of AIDS head-on without skirting around the issues that mainstream media was regularly too afraid to say out loud.
The narrative zeroed in on John Bolger’s Robert and Richard Ganoung’s Michael, a young gay couple in their 20s living in New York City. The former is preparing to leave the country for two years on a work assignment in Africa, while his partner opts to stay behind.
In the first major role of Steve Buscemi’s career, the actor plays Michael’s ex-boyfriend, Nick, who his former flame continues to look after and harbour feelings for as the singer in a rock band struggles to come to terms with the fact he’s dying of AIDS.
As well as dealing with the complexities and nuances of a long-distance relationship regardless of whether it’s LGBTQ+ or not, Parting Glances explored how both the known and unknown of AIDS affected and impacted the gay community in an age of regularly harsh Ronald Regan-era rhetoric.
Unfolding over the course of 24 hours, Sherwood takes time to inform and deepen the characters despite the running time being a sparse 90 minutes. It captures a moment in time that many potential viewers saw themselves in, at a point in history where the situations and themes intrinsic to the story were very rarely given the spotlight.
While Parting Glances was never intended to be a ‘message movie’ in the strictest sense, nor was it created with the intention of kickstarting a new period in independent American cinema, it was a watershed moment born from a place of intimate knowledge and familiarity, with filmmaker Sherwood passing away from AIDS-related complications just four years on from its release.
