Closing Numbers

“Anna” (Jane Asher) comments to her recently enlivened husband “Keith” (Tim Woodward) that she thinks it odd that their sex life has suddenly sprouted some new wings, after many years of contented marriage. Then she discovers something that makes her realise that she is not the exclusive beneficiary of his ardour, so sets up a meeting with her rival. Suffice to say she is shocked when that person arrives and turns out be more Arthur than Martha. Indeed, “Frank” (Frank Mills) is perfectly named as their conversation opens her eyes and exposes her to a betrayal that she struggles to reconcile. Oddly enough, it’s to his lover that she turns more and more and when she is introduced to his friend “Jim” (Nigel Charnock) who is ostracised from his parents and suffering from the final stages of AIDS, she begins to reappraise her views in a distinctly maternal fashion. It’s all a little simplistic, this film, but it does have a message to convey that was still relevant in 1993 when attitudes towards the “gay plague” may have softened since the 1980s, but scratch the surface and fear and bigotry were still close by. Asher and Mills do most of the heavy lifting, but for me it’s the effort from Charnock that hits the mark as a man facing his own mortality with a sense of the stoic as those close to him struggle to deal with who he was and is. It only scratches the surface on so many levels, but it does go some way to normalise a subject that was still very much taboo.