The film spends the first two acts covering the high school years, when Tim and John fall in love. It then moves back and forth between the boys’ university days at Monash and their life in Sydney. It’s a bold decision, meaning that John and Tim’s AIDS diagnosis in Sydney occurs roughly halfway through the film, before we revert to their university days. But it has important payoffs. For a start, it avoids simplifying those pre-diagnosis days as carefree and devoid of anxieties and frustrations; instead we see the complexities of the boys’ relationship, with their various feelings for each other at different times in careful juxtaposition. It also means that the audience’s expectations are jolted; those of us who think they are desensitised to the familiar trajectory of ‘80s and ‘90s AIDS films may suddenly find themselves in new territory, as we are never quite sure where the story will go next.