The AIDS epidemic here in the United States, swept under carpets and mired in politics, is projected as more a Third World problem than our own. Thom Fitzgerald's The Event, while not so physically graphic as, say, mainstream Philadelphia, emerges as a better take on the issue, dealing as it does largely with emotional and psychological consequences and, in particular, with the effects on those who surround the sufferer -- the families, friends and lovers who must watch and then keep memory and honor alive.

Mixing pathos and both broad and subtle humor, courage and cowardice, realism and exaggeration, this is an effective and moving film, if far from perfect. It needs editing, for starters, to rectify errors of chronology and probability; and of omission, as in the suspiciously quick cremation, which in reality could not have been arranged; certain characters are difficult to tell apart, while others are simply too one-hundred percent good to be true. Most glaringly wrong is the parallel "frame" story of Assistant District Attorney Nicole "Nick" Di Vivo (Parker Posey).

Resembling three other cases, the apparent suicide of terminal AIDS patient Matty Shapiro (Don McKellar) attracts Di Vivo's attention and efforts. As she rounds up and interviews friends, associates and family members, the story comes out in piecemeal flashbacks, though obviously some essential major clue remains hidden, even after a most improbable video tape -- obtained unrealistically and, by the way, illegally -- of a final party.

Arguably relevant because Di Vito herself has just lost her father and is fresh from facing a similar problem of euthanasia or "assisted suicide," the frame adds little and actually dilutes the central emotion, is too coincidental even while accounting for her intense interest, and should have been avoided. The Event runs almost two hours, and Fitzgerald and two co-writers would have done better devising a less emotionally obvious way to bring together the facts of the young man's death.

Grudgingly to the police, more openly among themselves, others fill in the story of Matt's final months. Most suspicious are friends like Brian (Brent Carver), caring director of an underfunded AIDS hospice who becomes the repository of unclaimed human ashes. He's also homosexual and the closest non-relative. But there are numerous others, a wide circle centered around the hospice and its Chelsea community, some of them straight, many not, including an overemotional lesbian "dying counselor" and a drag queen named Rory (Rejean J. Cournoyer), hostess of a gay cable access TV show and a physically formidable opponent. Then there are blood family, two sisters -- one supportive (Sarah Polley), the other resentfully rebelling (Joanna P. Adler) -- young nieces, an uncle and, at the head, Matt's widowed mother Lila (Olympia Dukakis), a pillar of Jewish liberal strength who has assessed the situation and put her son's unique needs above anything and everything else.

Perhaps it is the aloof, admittedly consistent character assigned her, but Posey's Nick does not elicit sympathy, even when talking with her own mother, widowed after fifty-two years of marriage, or smoking and brooding in close-up or dangerously using her policeman brother for her own extralegal purposes. It is the others, those of the mixed New York City neighborhood, who are finally alive, even in death, and who bring home the realization that there must be, and have been, hundreds or thousands of Matthew Shapiros.

On its own terms, The Event is moving and, more importantly, necessary. If at times it goes beyond what seems called for or realistic, it is well to remember that as little as twenty years ago the whole situation might have seemed a nightmare of disaster fiction or over-conscientious moralists. That the film could have been sharper is beside the point, as are some of its sappy dialogue and, together with Matt's cello, music choices such as "And When I Die" and "Spirit in the Sky" (Jesus does not figure here). Publicity proclaims The Event a celebration of life and love; well and good, but within what it does do, and does well, are the larger questions it raises, of community, of death and dignity and control of one's being.

(Released by ThinkFilm Inc. and rated "R" for sexual content, language and some drug use.)