The Event

With gay men dying under suspicious circumstances in Manhattan, assistant district attorney Parker Posey is determined to prosecute someone. When one AIDS sufferer (Don McKellar) meets his death by apparent suicide after a last hurrah party (the “event” in the title), Posey is on the case, and what she finds in this investigation--told mostly in flashback--is indescribably heartbreaking and unexpectedly comforting. Set in Chelsea and shot on digital video in downtown Manhattan, Thom Fitzgerald's simultaneously edgy and cozy elegy exists on the uncomfortable knife's edge where the law meets the necessary forging of new customs--in this case, an outcast culture creating its own observances of life's passage. Recommended. (M. Johanson)