It's not that hard to make people cry by telling them a story about a really great person who died through no fault of their own.  It's also easy to elicit laughs from audiences by showing them a guy getting whacked in the crotch with a baseball bat.  People say those types of comedies appeal to the "lowest common denominator," but why doesn't the same way of thinking apply to dramas?

Maybe I'm still bent from sitting through The Barbarian Invasions, the overly praised winner from Cannes, which is about a guy slowly dying from cancer (Want a good, original flick about death?  Check out Sarah Polley in My Life Without Me).  Likewise, The Event is about a guy slowly dying from AIDS, even though he's already dead when the film begins, with the slowly dying part shown in flashbacks.  That opening scene shows Matt (Don McKellar, waydowntown) lying lifeless in his Chelsea bedroom with a particularly odd assortment looking over him.  There's a French maid, a suspicious-looking guy in an overcoat, two women sipping martinis and a guy in drag.

The flashbacks begin when Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Nicole Devivo (Parker Posey, A Mighty Wind) is assigned Matt's case, as it seems quite similar to a handful of other questionable deaths revolving around one particular AIDS counselor.  That counselor, who also happens to be the suspicious-looking guy in an overcoat from the opening scene, is Brian (Brent Carver, Ararat), who works at an AIDS treatment center where he has to deal with both the deaths of his patients and their idiotic families who won't even come and pick up their ashes.

As Nick questions Brian and Matt's other friends and family about the confusion surrounding his death, we get into the flashbacks, which show him coming out to his mother (Olympia Dukakis) and sister (the aforementioned Sarah Polley), his deteriorating condition from ineffective drug cocktails, his hospital trips and sponge baths, and a quiet yet very effective 9-11 tribute.  Eventually, Nick learns there was a big party the night Matt died, and she becomes hell-bent on discovering whether this titular event was a gay variety show or a big euthanasia send-off.

Though Canadian (co)writer-director Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden) shoots The Event nicely, the overall effect of his non-linear storytelling is anti-climactic enough to simply be bothersome - even with the slightly ironic ending.  The performances are all decent, with Dukakis emerging as the only actor worth remembering or discussing on the way home.  The Event plays like a plodding two-episode arc, complete with very special guests, of a fifth Law & Order spin-off that doesn't yet exist.

1:54 -

for sexual content, language and some drug use