Avis des critiques

The dialogue is sensitively written, although its many fake outs regarding the central issue can grow frustrating, long after dramatic irony has taken hold. The script tends to sway toward unrelated topics to veil its expository purpose, which causes us to question the validity of these otherwise natural performances.

A small-scale family drama of real gentleness and emotional complexity... [1985] is desperately moving, with a few tissues-at-the-ready scenes, but wrapped too in a soft blanket of sadness.

What makes 1985 such a heartbreaking film is its refusal to contextualize Adrian’s suffering against the ongoing AIDS epidemic. The film never names the disease, only identifies its symptoms... The hyperlocalized nature of this tragedy gives this somewhat familiar story a razor-sharp edge.

A sensitive drama that slowly builds in power, "1985" feels like a missing minor classic from the decade that preceded the rise of the so-called New Queer Cinema, when independent filmmakers had to struggle to cobble together budgets that let them tell their stories in the form of modest art house movies.

Tan’s screenplay is instead more concerned with the smallest of gestures, the teensiest of wordings, which can sometimes make the film feel a little too modest for its own good.

Cory Michael Smith’s performance as Adrian is a quiet marvel in a movie that’s superbly acted all around. The film’s intimate consideration of still-enormous issues is intelligent, surprising and emotionally resonant.

Tan insists on all-too-predictable misery... At times, the characters and the situations they’re in seem to derive from an outdated, and particularly myopic, fantasy of the types of horrors that inhabited a gay man’s working-class American home.

Excellent... [1985] is a finely observed portrait of largely unarticulated tensions forced to the surface by the pressure of a “gay plague” then with scant hope of medical salvation.

1985 gets the notes right, and its foreboding look takes us back to a dark age. It’s a lesson worth remembering. Yet with all the prejudice and pain, the film still feels a lot like a sermon.

A deeply emotional tearjerker and family story set in a year when an HIV diagnosis was effectively a death sentence. This is a realistic, discreet, yet exploratory film that earns its tears honestly and scrupulously.

A sensitively observed period piece... Tan's screenplay... doesn’t entirely avoid cliche. But the integrity of the performances, the believability of the relationships and the authenticity of the milieu keep it from spilling over into mawkishness.

“1985” has the distinct feel of being a fine piece of cinematic craftsmanship by two artists with a shared vision. It is a haunting elegy for a generation of gay men.