Walking on Water

Sidney designer Gavin (Bonney) is in the last stage of an AIDS-related illness, cared for by his best friends and housemates Anna (Theodorakis) and Charles (Colosimo). He lets them know his pain is unendurable, whereupon his mother and family are asked to the house and a doctor administers an overdose of morphine. In a jet black comic touch, Gavin stutters back to life and Charles suffocates him with a paper bag. After Gavin's death, friends and family break apart in waves of loss, guilt, jealousy and confusion. Tony Ayres' first film is a graphic, intimate portrait of death, bold almost to the point of brusqueness (though it ends in catharsis, of sorts), as it affects members of the Australian gay community.