In Thom Fitzgerald’s newest journey into the horrors of AIDs we have one of the most powerful pictures to date of a disease that seems to have a mind of its own. Infective organisms need viable hosts and HIV has found a good one in humans. We are extremely mobile and we are healthy enough to survive the infection long enough to infect many others. The virus is spread effectively through sex and many cultures have developed promiscuous sexual lifestyles through either necessity or convenience. Finally, we have developed the most amazing faculty of injecting substances into our blood and exchanging blood with other substances.
Research to date indicates HIV existed in isolated communities long before it hit the big time with the infamous gay flight attendant in 1981. Tests have uncovered the virus in tissue samples taken decades before that. It was around along time before it found the perfect host in the humans of “modern civilization” whose mobility and generally high health provided the ability to spread the virus widely before dying of its effects.
‘3 Needles’ is a story in three parts demonstrating the spread of HIV through extremely diverse cultures and modes.
The first story is in Asia where an illegal blood collection operation unwittingly transmits the virus. The second is in Canada where a pornographic film actor spreads the virus. The third is in South Africa where the vector is violent rape and sexual promiscuity.
In the first story Ping (Lucy Liu) operates an illegal blood collection and distribution company. When she discovers a strange and lethal illness repeatedly cropping up in the course of the business she leaves the operation. Her husband and co-perp refuses to see the problem even though he is dying of the disease. Ping, we assume, is also infected, as may be the soldiers who assault her when she is busted in transit. The three factors of illegal business, blood transfusion and sexual assault combine to form the perfect storm.
In the second story Denys (Shawn Ashmore) is supporting his at-home mother Olive (Stockard Channing) and dying father through his secret life as a porn actor. He knows he is HIV positive but needs the money to keep his father in medication and his parents in their apartment. Forced by institutionalized poverty to keep his condition secret to keep his parents off the street, his disease spreads beyond his darkest nightmares. Sexual commerce, poverty and, most bizarre of all, life insurance, combine to spread the virus.
The last story is that of two nuns (Olympia Dukakis and Sandra Oh) and one novitiate (Chloë Sevigny) traveling to South Africa to save AIDs patients spiritually if they cannot be saved medically. The three become embroiled in the local quagmire of violence, ignorance and capitalistic domination that is part of everyday life in South Africa.
No matter what they do to try to improve the lot of the locals, each twist and turn seems only to pull everyone further into the miasma. HIV is the archetypal bulldog that increases its hold with the victim’s every move. It is the quicksand into which the victim sinks further with each attempt at escape.
If the film puts men in the primary role of progenitors (the head of the blood ring, the porn actor and South African male sexual aggression) this is a minor aberration in the generally realistic depiction of HIV as a universally human affliction.
Thankfully it is not laid at the door of gay sex, but is accurately portrayed as much more aggressive in the context of illicit blood exchange and the mandate of human procreation. One of the best depictions to date of the worst pandemic in the world.
Very limited release USA, December 1.
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