Chris & Don: A Love Story
Leonard Nimoy Thalia |
 |
“One of those legendary but true L.A. stories that confounds the city’s
clichéd Tinseltown image. Made with gentle grace and sensitivity.” –Variety
2007. USA.
Guido Santi, Tina Mascara. 90 min. Color.
The true-life story of the passionate three-decade
relationship between British writer Christopher Isherwood (whose Berlin
Stories was the basis for all incarnations of the much-beloved Cabaret)
and American portrait painter Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior. From
Isherwood’s Kit Kat Club years in Weimar-era Germany to the couple’s first
meeting on the sun-kissed beaches of 1950s Malibu, their against-all-odds saga
is brought to dazzling life by a treasure trove of multimedia. Bachardy’s
contemporary reminiscences (in the Santa Monica
home he shared with Isherwood until his death in 1986) artfully interact with
archival footage, rare home movies (with glimpses of glitterati pals W.H.
Auden, Igor Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams), reenactments, and, most
sweetly, whimsical animations based on the cat and horse cartoons the pair used
in their personal correspondence. With Isherwood’s status as an out-and-proud
gay maverick, and Bachardy’s eventual artistic triumph away from the
considerable shadow of his life partner, this is above all a joyful celebration
of a most extraordinary couple.
Click here for a trailer of this film.
