AN affecting and beauti fully realized documentary, “Chris & Don: A Love Story” captures the decades-long romance between British writer Christopher Isherwood and the American boy toy he met on a gay beach in Santa Monica, Calif.
Thirty years younger and seemingly not to be taken seriously, Don Bachardy was initially cowed by Isherwood’s fame and connections (the writer, whose stories inspired “Cabaret,” knew E.M. Forster and Tennessee Williams) but stuck it out and developed into a successful portrait painter. Among his first models were Hollywood types such as Fred Astaire and Laurence Olivier.
Narrated by Michael York (who played the Isherwood-like character in “Cabaret”), the film makes use of a clever series of animations and a deep archive of home movies that poignantly show both the pair’s sun-splashed 1950s frolics, when they made no secret of being gay, and the devastation of time. But it’s Bachardy’s obsessive series of paintings and drawings of the dying Isherwood, who expired in 1986, that give the film a powerful grip.
Before that, Isherwood’s friend Leslie Caron rushed to see him when she heard he was dying, but found him in robust health. Why the sudden improvement? Caron asked. Isherwood replied that he had refused to go. Pointing at Bachardy, he said, “He isn’t ready.”
Running time: 90 minutes. Not rated (sexual themes). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY