The Living end

On its release in the early 1990s, “The Living end” became one of the key films of the New Queer Cinema movement. Refuting both the conservatism of contemporary Hollywood and the increasingly bourgeois codes of “positive stereotyping” found in much of gay and lesbian cinema, Gregg Araki’s film celebrates and explores the sexual outlaws at the margins of Western gay life. Luke is a gay prostitute who lives on the streets. Jon is a sensitive movie critic who lives a comfortable, sterile life. The one thing they share in common is that they are both HIV+ and when they fall for each other they set about on a murderous road trip, killing anyone who gets in their way: macho homophobes, up-tight dykes, bitchy queens. Unlike films such as “Longtime companion” which attempted to homogenise and de-radicalise the experience of living with AIDS, “The Living end” shocked many viewers by placing two unapologetic survivors, whose anger and hatred is not muted, at the centre of its narrative. Araki’s low-budget aesthetic, influenced by equal measures of love for both punk music and the cinema of the French Nouvelle Vague, allowed him to create a truly dynamic, rough but wickedly subversive comedy road movie. Its humour, and its emotional vitality, remain undiluted.