Summary:

The movie opens with an idyllic, bright, summer beach scene at a seaside resort somewhere along the French coastline. The beach teems with waders and sunbathers enjoying the weather and each other. Ava, a thirteen-year-old girl vacationing with her single mother and baby sister, is napping on a rock wall. A large, black dog makes its away along the beach and encounters the sleeping Ava. She awakes, startles, and the dog runs off. She follows the dog to its owner, Juan, who is in the midst of a lover’s spat. The police come and take Juan away—he doesn’t have “papers.” This is not the last time Ava meets both Juan and his dog.

While on this holiday, Ava sees her ophthalmologist who informs her that her eyesight is worsening—she has retinitis pigmentosa, and a form that progresses to blindness more rapidly than other forms. The ophthalmologist tells Ava: 

Your field of view will shrink and you’ll lose your night vision before the circle closes. It can happen very young...Soon you won’t see well in low light...at night when a place is poorly lit, say...You’ll lose your sight soon.

Ava is shattered. She wishes that the ophthalmologist was dead: “He ruined our summer,” she says to her mother, who in response pledges, “we’ll have a great summer. We have two weeks. That’s good. They won’t spoil our summer. Screw them.” What happens during these two weeks comprises most of the movie.

Ava sees her prospects for the future vanish as her vision deteriorates. She needs to get as much life in as possible before then, and it begins with the time she has left at the beach. Feeding this urgency is Ava’s concern that the end of civilization could be nearing based on evidence a recreation staff member provided, and the approval her mother gives for engaging in sex: “My first time was very early. I was thirteen like you. I understand you wanting to try. I couldn’t stop you. You’ll do as you want, I know.” With this permission from her mother and feeling “My mother is probably unhappy with a daughter like me,” little pressure is left that could counter Ava’s desire to accelerate the accumulation of life experiences, no matter how risky. 

And so Ava is off and running, making her first act stealing Juan’s dog. This eventually brings them together. Juan is older, looking like he’s in his late teens, and he’s on the lamb. She joins him and experiences sex, plunder, violence, and close calls with police. We are left wondering what will happen to Ava; the circle is closing. 

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Summary:

Lionel Essrog is the narrator and main character of the novel, although when his Tourette syndrome kicks in, he might introduce himself as: “Liable Guesscog, Final Escrow, Ironic Pissclam, and so on” (p. 7). Tourette syndrome is a neurological condition causing involuntary, repetitive movements and vocal sounds (e.g., words, utterances, growls)—tics. 

Lionel lived at the Saint Vincent Orphanage in Brooklyn, New York until a local “penny-ante hood,” Frank Minna, recruited him and three other “white boys” to do his bidding as a “motley gang of high-school-dropout orphans.” (p. 291) Truck piracy was their first line of work, all the while oblivious about why they were moving boxes from one truck to another. Minna expanded his business into more lucrative and dangerous activities under the façade of a limousine service and private detective agency. He gets too close to the sun and is murdered. Lionel liked Minna, who became a father figure to him, accepted his Tourette quirkiness, and even conspired with him to throw their clients off balance when it served their purpose. Though Lionel admitted, “We were as much errand boys as detectives,” he recasts himself as a bona fide detective and makes finding the murderers his raison d’être. (p. 156) 

In typical murder-mystery fashion, Lionel must wend his way through complex relationships and find hidden clues to solve the case. In not-so-typical fashion, he contends with the Tourette syndrome accompanying him; Tourette is a major character in the book. Together, they find who murdered Frank Minna. 

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Summary:

This film chronicles the short lives of two Australian gay men from their teenage years into the AIDS epidemic. Following the perspective of Timothy Conigrave (Ryan Corr), the audience witnesses the beginning of his relationship with John Caleo (Craig Scott) at an all-boys school in Melbourne during the 1970s. The two lead distinctly different lives: Timothy is a typical, sexually charged teenager involved in theatre, while John is a subdued, Catholic rugby player. With the help of three female friends, Tim finds himself kissing John at a private dinner party, beginning a stereotypically endearing teenage romance. Alas, their idyll dissolves with John’s father’s discovery of a love letter. He forbids the two from seeing each other, but being typical teenagers, the two disregard his wishes. They continue to date into college. While John is content with their relationship, Timothy expresses his desire to branch out, both in his romantic and professional lives. He applies to and is accepted by NIDA (the National Institute of Dramatic Art) and asks John for a separation while there. Tim, now unencumbered by a relationship, sleeps around in a montage of homoerotic encounters. Eventually Tim and John get back together, but their relationship, like those of most other homosexual men at that time, has become haunted by an insidious illness: HIV. On a seemingly routine check in 1985, both men are diagnosed positive. They assume that John was infected first given his worse lab values; however, Tim returns to his parents’ place for a wedding a few years later only to discover from the Red Cross that he was likely positive in 1981. Tim and John spend roughly the next decade in and out of the hospital, John’s condition being markedly worse than Tim’s. John dies in 1992. Tim is acknowledged as a “friend” in the funeral to appease John’s religious family despite their 15-year-long relationship. Having worked as a writer and activist since leaving NIDA, Tim makes use of his skill to write a memoir with John as the subject. Tim completes the memoir in 1994 Italy and dies ten days later.

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Summary:

David Sheff (Steve Carell) and Nic Sheff (Timothée Chalamet) never had a stereotypical father-son relationship, one moment sharing a joint by a Volvo 240, another speaking Klingon in a small-town café in California. The fallout of divorce proceedings and long-distance shared custody seemed to solidify their relationship further; only Nic’s summer and holiday stays in LA with his mother could separate him from his journalist father–that is, until he starts experimenting with drugs. Beginning with marijuana and alcohol, Nic eventually finds himself using meth in his teens, his intellectual precocity feeding an existential need to escape. His substance use disorder, with meth at the forefront, takes hold of his life. Over the course of roughly five years, Nic fluctuates between relapse and sobriety, resulting in two failed attempts at college, multiple instances of theft and deceit, a car chase, and a hospital admission, supposedly at Bellevue Hospital. David Sheff is all the while present to varying degrees, supporting his son in his efforts at rehabilitation while being decimated by anxiety over his child’s well-being and multiple disappearances. His concern often undermines his other responsibilities, namely being fully present in the lives of his current wife, Karen, and his two young children, Jasper and Daisy. This tension reaches its climax when Nic’s mom calls David imploring for help in getting Nic treatment. David, having reached a breaking point, refuses, saying, “I don’t think you can save people” [01:42:33]. Soon thereafter, Nic graphically overdoses for the second time and miraculously survives. The film ends with David and Nic embracing in the courtyard of a rehab facility while the second movement of Górecki's Symphony no. 3 plays in the background. Before the credits, the audience learns that, at the time of the film’s final production, Nic had been sober for 8 years.  

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