Jaw-droppingly intimate and sensitive. Be prepared to be wrecked - the whole theater was shaking with sobs at points.

Beautifully and specifically queer. I've never on screen seen gay sex that *felt* this much like gay sex. The texture of it. There's a brief, funny, inter-micro-generation terminology convo that if you are LGBTQ of a certain age, you've had. There are two coming out conversations with lines that I swear are plagiarized from my life. There's a delightful subversion, in an early scene, of cruising, that achieves a cocktail of funny and sweet and sad that returns throughout the film (most notably in a moment where a 48-year-old Adam climbs into bed with his parents wearing a 12-year-old's pajamas). The exploration of how things can be so much better than 1987 but still not fine, and the ways the not-okayness of 1987 is still with us, especially in the psyches of folks that were there… so relatable and such a rare and subtle theme.

There is a final twist that, while devastating, does some real damage to Adam's character and, in my opinion, the emotional impact of the movie. [spoiler]Investing incredibly deeply in a fantasy of a relationship with a neighbor that didn’t happen is creepy where imagining you can talk to your dead parents again is sweet and sad. We know early on that the interactions with Adam’s parents aren’t a part of conventional reality and that doesn’t diminish any of their emotional impact, but the romantic relationship being unreal cheapens it.[/spoiler]

This last emotional gutting felt unnecessary and unearned to me: it makes me hesitant to recommend the movie, despite how much it affected me, despite the impeccable execution. A friend who saw the movie with me and didn’t personally relate to as many of the queer culture touchpoints felt emotionally manipulated, and I get that. But aside from the last few minutes, my experience of the movie was near-perfect.