They called it controversial back in 1982, but today it just feels painfully honest. Making Love isn’t a film about being gay — it’s about being real, even when reality ruins everything you thought was safe.
Another Sunday afternoon film for the gay family circle – soft light, emotional mess, and a truth that refuses to stay buried.
Back in 1982, Making Love wasn’t just a movie. It was Hollywood walking right into a subject everyone was pretending didn’t exist. A respected doctor, a loving wife, and a writer who happens to be gay — three lives colliding in a story about honesty and the cost of living a lie. It was quiet, brave, and way ahead of its time.
Zach is a successful doctor who’s been with Claire for eight years. They have it all planned: marriage, kids, a house with shiny floors, and that slow, polite kind of happiness that looks great on paper. But even he feels it — the boredom, the silence, the nagging sense that something’s missing. Then he meets Bart, a writer, older, confident, and completely at peace with who he is. And just like that, everything starts to fall apart — or maybe finally fall into place.
I used to joke that every straight man eventually meets a gay man who forces him to question everything. That’s not a tragedy — that’s life. The only difference between gay men and straight men is that gay men have learned to lie better. We lie to protect ourselves, to survive, to fit. We jump in and out of beds trying to feel something real. It’s not pretty, but it’s honest.
Zach doesn’t know those rules yet. He still believes love should come with honesty, tenderness, and the courage to stay. Poor guy. He doesn’t realize that honesty in our world can be a dangerous sport. Bart, of course, plays the classic part — the man who’s seen too much and hides behind his own fear of being hurt again. “You don’t get points for playing by the rules,” he says, and he’s right. But then again, someone always ends up bleeding when there are no rules at all.
What makes Making Love special is how normal it is. No spectacle, no loud declarations — just people trying to be themselves without destroying someone else. When Zach finally tells Claire the truth, it’s not a soap opera. It’s silence, shock, and heartbreak. She just stares at him, realizing the life she built is gone, and it wasn’t another woman — it was the truth itself that took him away.
I’ve lived that scene. I once let myself fall for a married man — same story, same excuses. He wanted friendship, love, safety, and me, all at once. And like an idiot, I thought I could manage that balance. I couldn’t. You can’t. Nobody can. You end up being the ghost in someone else’s perfect picture. The one who’s always “loved, but hidden.”
That’s why Making Love still hurts. Because it’s not about being gay — it’s about being honest. About how hard it is to stop pretending, even when every lie sta
Brazilian drama about a writer and a young hustler in Rio whose relationship blurs the line between passion and destruction.
Director/writer: Maximilian von Moll
