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Holding the Man

453 votes

Producing House

Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the football team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years in the face of everything life threw at it – the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.

movie

Status: Released

Released Date: 2015-08-27

Runtime: 128 mins

Director: Neil Armfield

Writer: Tommy Murphy

Spoken language: English

Genres: Drama

Original title: Holding the Man

Production Companies: Goalpost Pictures, Screen Australia, Snow Republic, John Barry Group

Production Countries: Australia

Reviews

G

Geronimo1967
Based on a true story; this is a touching and moving story of a couple of young Australian men who fall in love as youngsters in the days before there was any AIDS awareness. Ryan Corr ("Tim") and Craig Matthew Scott ("Tom") are superb as they act out their joyous loving relationship (complete with it's obligatory ups and downs) and then have to face the fact that, 15 years later, one has become terminally ill. We share the traumatic journey, poignantly told as they both try to reconcile themselves to the inevitable. Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush star too and Anthony LaPaglia and Camilla Ah Kin play "John"'s parents sensitively - their grief compounded by their perception of the blame lying on his "choices". It is raw and at times horrible to watch - the decline is pretty full-on but none the less watchable and engrossing for that. It's seems odd now that this was an unstoppable disease, but for many of us who were young in the 1970s and 1980s this was just how it happened. The lack of legal status of the partner in the whole process is sickening but thankfully, for many, long changed for the better.
2025-10-10

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