I don't know if movies are better than ever. Bette Davis--with a brain-ailment-- got herself a doctor. Why shouldn't this dancer get one too? After all, he's got great Bette Davis eyes.

I hate to sound Jewish (but I am Jewish), but why not, even, a psychiatrist?

Author Martin Sherman put his Bent hero in a concentration camp finding True Love (orgasms with no physical contact while piling heavy rocks in rhythm.)

Here it's orgasms with condoms (but really, its tough imagining Bette Davis unwrapping condoms.)

Mr. Sherman, in Bent, had gratuitous male frontal nudity and, thank G-d, here it is again in this film. Men stark naked in the showers (these shared with the company's singular female dancer.)

But what kind of tale does Alive and Kicking tell?

It opens with the dance company visiting Ramon, their chief, a Cuban-in-exile, dying of AIDS. The scenes here are very realistic, those pretty T.B. kinds of scenes that Garbo had in Camille, except it's KS time now.

Dancing at a disco shortly after Ramon's death, our Main Character, Tonio (he with the Bette Davis eyes, but a bod to die for) is hit upon by a short, homely dude he's seen at the funeral. Its Tonio's therapist.

In a cute Bette Davis-type scene Tonio (played by Jason Flemyng) flirts with, then drops the homely therapist (played by Anthony Sher) who, nevertheless, persists and then succeeds in winning Tonio.

The plot's half-predictable: They fight, part, get together while, all along, Tonio fights with the disease.

There's one of those melodramatic the-show-must-go-on scenes that's mawkish, but, for this viewer, workable.

And a final scene, a bouquet to those in the audience who've sweated buckets as the couple, united, walk hand-in-hand in the park and kiss, just like the old/new Hollywood films-- only here/now in Real London where they get heckled by pair of "normal" London males yelling "poofters!" (not "faggots"! but for American viewers easily translatable.)

I loved, still love, Bette Davis but it's nice, more than nice, to have our own.

Wait! More credits are in order:

The dancer's mentor/partner, Ramon, is played by Anthony Higgens. His best friend, company head, is a black Lesbian dancer(Diane Parish); There's also an older woman starting to lose her memory (Dorothy Tutin); and the score is the composition of Peter Salem. Finally, a big round of applause for choreographer Liz Ranken, who made the lead actor, in two month's time, look like a very good dancer indeed.

Defects in the film? Well....the photography's so grainy one would think the movie's blown-up in 16 mm. And when the film moves to "location" in Greece there are very conservative picture-postcard sets showing the two talking with the Parthenon as background. The damn camera wobbles, however, when, if you please, it should be picture-postcard still!

There's a memorable scene when the therapist (working for the government) goes hysterical with rage about the budget cuts which result in a maximum of three "visits" (office calls the patient with AIDS makes) per patient. One wonders if the photographer in real life wasn't cursing the film-maker's budget.

(Note: at the 1996 Geneva film festival Jason Flemyng [that "yng" ending looks fake and "arty" to me, unless he's Welsh] won Best Actor for live andA Kicking, originally made in the UK by Channel Four; released this month--September-- in the U.S.A.)

As with Bette Davis in Dark Victory, he worked for that award.

The informational handed out by First Look Pictures quotes lead actor Jason Flemyng, telling us he's straight and didn't know if he could handle the gay love scenes. He was also afraid, he said "..that I'd enjoy it -- and the last thing I want in my life at the moment [italics courtesy of the reviewer] is to find out I'm bisexual."

Dear Jason, you don't need to be bisexual to make homosexuals happy. Just be beautiful, act up a storm in a great script/story and we're happy.

Very.