Film

Zero Patience (1993)

Director: John Greyson

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A witty riposte to And the Band Played On, this is Canadian AIDS activist Greyson's personal take on 'official' AIDS history. Picking up where Randy Shilts left off, he introduces us to 'Patient Zero', the Air Canada flight attendant alleged to have brought AIDS to America. But scapegoating couldn't be further from the picture. Slyly inverting popular wisdom, the movie offers a sassy commentary on the epidemic of blame. The plot follows the fortunes of notorious Victorian explorer and sexologist Sir Richard Burton as he works to assemble a multi-media museum display on the origin of AIDS. His plans are thwarted when he runs into Zero, back from the dead and determined to clear his name. The film offers a timely reminder that AIDS movies needn't be all Kodak moments and earnest posturing. Matching a flagrant disregard for sentimental pieties with a passion for undermining generic conventions, Greyson has produced a film which engages your mind as much as your heart, and leaves you laughing. PBur.

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