Do you have a video playback issues?
Please disable AdBlocker in your browser for our website.
Due to a high volume of active users and service overload, we had to decrease the quality of video streaming. Premium users remains with the highest video quality available. Sorry for the inconvinience it may cause. Donate to keep project running.
Sam is a New York artist and former AIDS activist who is disillusioned with the world around him. While dredging up buried memories and resentments to make a film about a friend he lost to AIDS, Sam gets caught up in a relationship with Braeden. At first critical of the young man for his generation's failure to appreciate how easy they have it, Sam slowly realizes that he has much to learn about what gay life is like today.
... a valuable meditation on generational differences, particularly between gay men who lived through the worst years of the AIDS crisis and those who came of age afterward.
As an actor, [Zachary] Booth can't quite keep up with [Alan] Cumming, but Braeden is likable in ways that the cynical Sam is not, so it evens out in the end.
Its subject matter is interesting, and it's right to remind viewers of the need for different generations of queer people to communicate, but After Louie is burdened by narrative and dialogue clichés that undermine its emotional appeal.
While it's well-intentioned to a fault, and driven by deep convictions, the film also is diffuse, lethargically paced and short on thematic trenchancy, building powerful individual moments but seldom sustaining a compelling narrative thread.
But the film is overstuffed with messages that, while important, are imparted in a didactic fashion. At least Cumming's poignant turn as Sam helps the film over its rough moments.