Subject: Ibsen, AIDS, a Suave Con Artist, Saddam's Atrocities 
Date: Published: 3/26/92 (35 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    LEISURE & ARTS:
    TV:  Ibsen, AIDS, a Suave Con Artist, Saddam's Atrocities
    ----
    By Dorothy Rabinowitz

[20 lines irrelevant to AIDS removed.  -- sysop]

                   Something to Live For:
                   The Alison Gertz Story
    Alison Gertz is the young New York woman from a well-to-do
 family who contracted AIDS, at 16, during a one-night stand.
 Her story made it into the news because it was an early and
 unnerving example of someone neither gay nor a junkie who
 contracted AIDS.  Molly Ringwald does well as Alison, first a
 spoiled and then a suffering young woman.  But the real class
 in this film comes from the performances of two pros, Lee
 Grant and Martin Landau.  They portray Alison's mother and
 father, a couple devastated by their child's suffering and by
 guilt.  They had been the quintessential enlightened parents,
 too civilized to ask what their young teenager was doing out
 till 4 a.m.  Alison's mother also had taken her to a doctor to
 get her on birth control pills at 15.  All this Ms. Grant and
 Mr. Landau convey, with never a false note.  The nonsense
 comes from the producers, who impose a most revoltingly
 hoked-up ending on a story otherwise grippingly down to
 earth.
    9-11 p.m. EST, on ABC. 

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the
 personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the
 hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering
 from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]