NoFace for Film

Title: 3 Needles
Year: 2005
Director: Thom Fitzgerald
Starring Cast: Lucy Liu, Shawn Ashmore, Stockard Channing, Olympia Dukakis, and Chloë Sevigny
Rated: R

NoFace for Film rating: 3 out of 7

In 1993, HBO aired a critically acclaimed film called And the Band Played On, which detailed the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic and its deadly, eventual impact on society. The film not only focused on early victims, but on the struggle between the scientists who wished to alert the world on their discovery and the wary politicians who dismissed it as a “gay disease”. Over ten years later, another film was produced that explores this crisis, this time from a wholly different perspective. Directed by Thom Fitzgerald, 3 Needles is composed of three stories of people who live in different parts of the world and are not connected in any way, except that their lives have been cruelly affected by the AIDS crisis.

The first story takes place in a small, rural Chinese community. When Ping (Lucy Liu) arrives and announces that she would pay $5.00 to each person who donates blood, the impoverished villagers are overjoyed. However, their happiness turns to confusion and sorrow when people start to die from a mysterious illness. The second story is in Montreal, where porn actor Denys (Shawn Ashmore) fakes his mandatory blood tests to hide his HIV+ status from co-stars. When his mother Olive (Stockard Channing) finds out, she resorts to an extremely desperate and stupid act to ensure that her son spends the remainder of his short life in comfort. The third story is in South Africa, where a trio of nuns (Olympia Dukakis, Chloë Sevigny, and Sandra Oh) arrive to save the souls of villagers dying of AIDS. When five young orphans come into the nuns’ care, Sister Clara (Sevigny) makes an unsettling deal with a wealthy, local plantation owner to ensure the children’s survival.

3 Needles is not pleasant to watch. It doesn’t tiptoe around the issues, nor does it paint an idealistic image of the people whose lives are affected by AIDS. The characters you encounter throughout the stories are relatively well-rounded individuals, neither inherently “good” or “evil”. For example, Denys may be considered as a horrible person since he’s willingly infecting his co-stars, but when you see his pathetic life, you almost sympathize with him and understand why he needs to keep his job. None of the stories end on a positive note; rather, they end on a depressing but realistic one. Meanwhile, the beautiful scenery is a stark contrast to the bleak, horrifying reality the characters face in their respective stories.

While the subject matter is highly important, overall I didn’t quite care for this film. A good deal of it is technical. The pace is extremely slow, and I was bored much of the time. There were also too many unnecessary scenes that should have ended up on the cutting room floor. For example, there’s a pointless scene featuring Denys memorizing his lines in front of a mirror. In addition, there was very little dialogue, which made the plot of each story a little tough to follow at times.

Another problem with the film is that the director doesn’t seem to know on whose story to focus. For example, the China story begins with Ping, but she abruptly vanishes after the first ten minutes. The audience spends the next 15 minutes with two new characters, a villager and his little daughter. Ping doesn’t reappear again until much later in the story. The Montreal story has a similar problem. During the first half the focus is on Denys, but suddenly that focus shifts. The last half of the story deals primarily with Olive, and we barely see Denys. Even the opening sequence doesn’t make any sense, as it follows a group of young boys in some type of rite-of-passage ceremony. We don’t see them again until the South Africa story, and even then their purpose in the film is still unclear.

Finally, I didn’t like 3 Needles because of the confusing messages the stories send. I won’t spoil anything, but the main female characters in each story - Ping, Olive, and Sister Clara - commit incredibly stupid and horrific acts, supposedly out of love. While this might be true for Sister Clara, Ping and Olive’s actions are rather dubious.

The DVD offers many of the usual special features one expects in a DVD: trailer and ads, deleted scenes, and a photo gallery. However, it also contains two documentaries: China AIDS Initiative, featuring Magic Johnson and Yao Ming; and House on Fire - AIDS in America.

While it’s well-meaning and admirable for Fitzgerald and the cast to tackle a difficult and important subject such as AIDS, this film fails at its task for all the reasons mentioned above.