Film

Chris & Don: A Love Story

A intimate documentary portrait of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy's 33-year partnership, told through their own archival footage, diary entries, and interviews with those who knew them. It's a tender, unsentimental account of how two artists built a life together across decades of social hostility. For anyone interested in queer history, mid-century literary culture, or simply how love actually works.

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Courage Under Fire1996

Deepti Naval and Shabana Azmi as a couple discovering love after arranged marriages. Like Chris & Don, it's quietly radical—finding beauty and defiance in domestic intimacy, refusing to apologize or perform for the camera.

But The film operates in a different cultural and temporal context; some viewers find its pacing meditative to the point of stillness.

Courage Under Fire poster

The Killing of Sister George1968

A rare 1960s drama centred entirely on a lesbian relationship, with Beryl Reid and Susannah York. It captures the same texture of 20th-century queer life—the small betrayals, the real tenderness, the precariousness.

But The film is dated in its depiction of lesbian life and carries some unflattering stereotypes from its era.

The Killing of Sister George poster

Portrait of Jason1967

An experimental documentary where filmmaker Shirley Clarke films a young Black gay man over 12 hours. Like Chris & Don, it trusts footage and presence over narrative, revealing character through real time.

But It's deliberately challenging and claustrophobic—a single room, one camera, no conventional plot. Demands patience and attention.

Portrait of Jason poster

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The Act of Killing2012

Both films trust documentary footage and self-presentation to reveal truth. But where Chris & Don celebrates love through archive, The Act of Killing uses the same form to expose the stories we tell ourselves to live with our actions. Same tool, opposite moral project.

Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary asks perpetrators of Indonesian mass murder to recreate their crimes on film. Disturbing and essential, it examines how people narrate themselves and justify violence—a radical act of bearing witness.

But It is extremely disturbing. The violence is not graphic but psychological and morally suffocating. This is not entertainment.

The Act of Killing poster
More like this (7)

Paris Is Burning1991

Jennie Livingston's documentary on New York's ballroom scene. It shares Chris & Don's interest in how marginalized people create beauty, community, and identity outside mainstream structures.

But The film contains dated language and doesn't fully address its own exploitation of its subjects. It's been criticised for issues of representation.

Paris Is Burning poster

The Celluloid Closet1996

Rob Epstein's survey of LGBTQ representation in cinema. If Chris & Don sparks curiosity about queer history and art, this is the natural next step—contextualising the invisibility Isherwood and Bachardy lived within.

But It's more of a lecture than an experience; decades of clips sewn together can feel encyclopaedic rather than moving.

The Celluloid Closet poster

Looking2014

This HBO series follows four gay men in San Francisco with intelligence and gentleness. It's about the accumulated texture of queer life—commitment, disappointment, friendship—without melodrama.

But The show was cancelled after two seasons and a film, leaving storylines unresolved. Some find its gentleness boring after the first episode.

Looking poster

Happy Together1997

Wong Kar-wai's dizzyingly beautiful film about two men in Buenos Aires. Like Chris & Don, it's about the ordinariness of love—cooking breakfast, arguing, trying again—rendered luminous.

But It's deliberately stylised and abstract. If you want narrative clarity, you'll find its visual poetry frustrating rather than moving.

Happy Together poster

Maurice1987

James Ivory's adaptation of Forster's novel about two men claiming a life together in Edwardian England. The film shares Chris & Don's belief that queer love is worth taking seriously—tender, complex, and real.

But It can feel overly literary and mannered; the period setting and restraint may read as distance rather than intimacy.

Maurice poster

Carol2015

Todd Haynes' film about desire and love between two women in 1950s America. It's visually extraordinary and emotionally precise about the cost of refusing to hide.

But The film prioritises aesthetic beauty over character development; some viewers find it emotionally distant despite its subject matter.

Carol poster

Boyhood2014

Isherwood and Bachardy's love was documented across 33 years by themselves. Boyhood mirrors that structure—a relationship (between filmmakers and subjects) deepened by real duration, not pretended duration.

Richard Linklater filmed the same cast over 12 years to show childhood becoming adulthood. Like Chris & Don, it trusts time itself as the subject—change, accumulation, the texture of years passing together.

But Nothing dramatic happens. For some, the refusal of plot momentum reads as the film having nothing to say.

Boyhood poster

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