Au-delà du désespoir

Our Sons is an ok tv movie but could've been better. I did get a good laugh out of Julie Andrews calling Ann Margret " A stupid bitch". Ann Margret and Julie Andrews are good but Hugh Grant is annoying as usual.

Our Sons, although a more than fine TV Movie, doesn't bring anything new to the table, the moral basically being watered down to "Love your kids, even if they're gay." In the movie's defense, it did come out around the peak of the AIDS epidemic and while I wasn't born at the time, I can say for certain there was a lot of stigma around the virus.

Regardless, I can recognize the importance of this movie, though an obvious product of its time. It might pander to straight people a little bit too much at times, but if movies like this make at least one parent accept their queer child, then so be it.

It's not the best AIDS or gay drama around, but it's good. The cast is great and the script, while being imperfect, has very good moments.

The four main characters are well developed and their conflict with each other are very interesting.

A very nice TV movie, but still- a TV movie. Nothing more than that.

Gay couple in Los Angeles deals with tragedy: one of the men has full-blown AIDS, and his estranged mother from Arkansas is called for. Soon, the mothers of both boys meet for the first time and couldn't be more dissimilar. Big-hearted TV-movie with statistics from 1991--at the time, 108,731 Americans had perished from AIDS. Everyone here is struggling to understand the disease (and homosexuality in general), which is pretty realistic for this era. Julie Andrews is the wealthy society-type who lives in a sparkling abode; Ann-Margret plays the bewigged cowgirl who's had a wild life of ups and downs. Dramatically, it might have been more interesting if the two actresses had switched roles--they're a little bit typecast--but it's a comfortable, secure match, and both ladies are shown to good advantage. Not so Hugh Grant as Andrews' son, looking a bit distanced from the proceedings. A small-budgeted but emotional film, dignified and even-keeled, and though Ann-Margret's character is anti-gay and refers to her son as "one of them", the movie attempts to show personal growth and is ultimately compassionate. *** from ****

Our Sons is one of the better films dealing with AIDS that I've seen next to The Normal Heart. It casts Julie Andrews and Ann Margret as two radically different women who must come together when one of their sons is dying of AIDS.

Hugh Grant has an early role as Andrews' son and he pleads with his mother to bring Margret's character from Arkansas to see his dying lover and her son. This doesn't go as planned and Andrews must convince Margret to see her son, because Margret is under the impression that her son deserves what's coming to him because of his lifestyle.

Even 30 years later, this story is all too resonate with parents abandoning their gay children all the time. Our Sons tells an incredibly moving story about how it's never too late to reconnect and forgive. Andrews and Margret have never been better and you have to give them credit for willing to star in a non-judgemental story about AIDS when people were still scared to talk about it.