Gay Sex in the '70s

Joseph Lovett's nostalgic paean to the erotic utopia of his youth might be more accurately titled "Anonymous Gay Male Sex in the '70s in Manhattan."

Within that narrow framework, the film is quite successful, using archival photographs, clips from pornographic films and television commercials, and interviews to evoke the period between June 1969, when the Stonewall riots brought homosexuality out of the shadows, to June 1981, when the AIDS epidemic began.

Lovett is not out to place the sexual revolution in historical context or make larger statements about the struggle for gay civil rights. Rather, his film is a scrapbook of remembered pleasures: summers on Fire Island, trysts in the Ramble of Central Park, and orgies in the St. Mark's bathhouse.

If documenting these memories seems like an insubstantial artistic goal, wait until the film's final moments, when the interview subjects' stories of the ravages of AIDS underscore the brevity of their day in the sun.

"Gay Sex in the '70s" is not rated but would probably receive an NC-17 for graphic scenes of gay sex, full male nudity, strong sexual profanity and other sexual talk, and some drug content (references to recreational drug use). Running time: 70 minutes.