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Review

Based on the life and works of the late artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992, this stylized drama (not a biopic) brilliantly portrays the life of this tortured gay soul on a desperate, life-long search for love and the supportive family he never had. The episodic story intercuts three periods in David's life: his abused childhood (as played by Olmo Tighe); his 1970s late teens years as a Times Square hustler and petty thief (Michael Tighe); and his emotionally adrift life as an adult (James Lyons) who substitutes furtive, anonymous sex for love and whose rage and alienation eventually takes to the road. A dreamy, meditative, melancholy and gripping experience whose story and fragmented structure is reminiscent of Cyril Collard's Savage Nights and Todd Haynes' Poison. McLean collaborated with Wojnarowicz before his death and based the film on two of his autobiographical writings, "Close to the Knives" and "Memories That Smell Like Gasoline."