Longtime Companion.

Even weaker in its hold on what might be called truth-or, more modestly, reality-is Longtime Companion, the first feature film of the longtime theater team of Craig Lucas (playwright) and Norman Rene (director). Longtime Companion (the term designates a homosexual lover at the bottom of family-newspaper obituaries) was intended for television, and will eventually be shown on American Playhouse, but is currently enjoying theatrical distribution. It is a film of superficial proficiency-though the continuity is sometimes puzzling-and fundamental dishonesty.

It concerns seven young or youngish men-three homosexual couples and one friend-plus a young woman who is a friend to all of them. The story begins on July 3, 1981, when a New York Times article first calls attention to a deadly cancer later to be named AIDS. The film zeroes in on one day per year between 1981 and 1988 in the lives of this octet. Yet it splits into three sections: 1) foreboding: as the carefree life of these bibelot-surrounded Upper East Siders and freewheeling but not overpromiscuous Fire Island fun lovers becomes gradually more threatened; 2) agony: as several of them sicken and slowly die, while the others succor them with unwavering devotion; and 3) afterglow: as three survivors reminisce on a grey Fire Island beach and, suddenly, dozens of the young and handsome dead come running to the beach to laugh, play, and love again-until the vision fades and the trio, two lovers and the girl, depart in guarded hopefulness.

That last vision, by the way, is a crib from Places in the Heart (Lucas and Rene are not very fastidious about where they're scavenging) and may hook onto an earlier bit of dialogue: Mat do you think happens when we die?" "We get to have sex again, I hope." Much of the talk is similarly brittle: "Who's the President of the United States?" "Ronald Reagan." "Who's the Vice President?" "Nancy Reagan." Again, when asked why she thinks her next-door neighbor is homosexual, the young woman answers, "He lives with another guy and they both have great bodies." You kill me!" The preciousness may well be psychologically correct, but there may be too much of it. Altogether, these eight people are too affluent, too beautiful, too white to make much of a statement. And the dying, when not cut off too quickly or omitted, is as lyrically poignant as that of the Lady of the Camellias, a/k/a La Traviata.

In a stab at honesty, Lucas and Rene will have one of their characters share a hospital room with another man (Robert Joy) who is homely, covered with blotches, watched over by a sole and very weird companion, and uncouth as he violently tears out his life-supporting I.V. and raucously starts running away. Another principal, doing charity work in Harlem, is insulted and exploited by a Hispanic AIDS patient. But these incidents are kept peripheral and fairly inconspicuous. The rest, though especially well acted by Bruce Davison, Mark Lamos, and Campbell Scott, is poeticized, unreal, and snobbish, as when a dead man is eulogized for having been really classy . . . so really classy" because with him "there was no discussion; you became an immediate friend." Friend, hmm? Discussion, anyone?