Abstract

Films

The article focuses on several films. The romantic comedy "Reality Bites," written by 23-year-old Helen Childress about a bunch of 22-year-olds. The setting is Houston; the characters, young people fresh out of college with expectations so low that they seem to feel loss before any love. In now-approved nineties fashion, the characters look back with fondness on very little, except for "The Brady Bunch." The other film "Savage Nights" bears more than its fair burden of love and loss. This too is a film about young people on the loose, in the eighties not the nineties: about a freelance filmmaker who is HIV-positive; about his soccer-playing boyfriend; and about the 18-year-old girl named Laura whom he recruits for a TV commercial and his bed. At the plot's crucial moment, the filmmaker knowingly puts Laura at risk as the ultimate expression of a reckless, irresponsible rage.