Fairyland

One of the many things that makes “Fairyland” remarkable is the detached but compassionate way it presents everything, including scenarios that now drive the right-wing outrage machine, like gay men raising children. Johnny initiates Alysia into the world of makeup, as her late mother would have, and remarks that when he was a boy, he asked for dresses and was denied them. “I never understood why only girls get to have beautiful things,” he says. Eddie Buddy becomes an adjunct father. When Alysia wakes up in the middle of the night, distressed after watching a horror movie on TV, she goes into her dad’s room and climbs into bed next to him. Eddie Buddy slumbers next to Steve, as partners do. It’s exactly what happens in the homes of straight couples with kids, and the movie presents it as unremarkable. When San Francisco is devastated by the AIDS epidemic, Steven visits a hospice once a week to comfort a friend who’s dying. These visits are presented as nothing more than an example of compassion expressed through action, no different than if the friend were dying of liver failure or lung cancer.