Nelson George’s social cause soap was based on his HIV positive sister Andrea Williams and has a simple message – denial isn’t an option. This is rammed home hard as every character has a link to the virus and many scenes take place in the support group where women discuss coping with day to day living, such as how to tell a new partner you’re positive and the benefits of condoms for girls.

The female centric melodrama revolves around Latifah’s Ana, a hard nose ‘my way or the highway’ type, desperate to regain the love of the teenage daughter Kelly (Rachel Nicks) she neglected when she was a user. Her parenting skills have improved since as she had another daughter, Kim, with her ex-addict husband Slick (Wendell Pierce) who infected her.

Ana’s relationships with her daughters exemplify her conflicting personality – a redemptive do-gooder whose vicious tongue upsets loved ones as much as it inspires them.

Kelly’s drug-addled HIV positive friend Amare (Evan Ross) highlights the Ana we don’t see before she got clean and lifted her head out of a crack filled haze. In order to prove to her eldest daughter she is worthy of her love, Ana goes on a mission to find the reckless Amare when he goes missing.

Life Support stops short of outright propaganda, but succeeds in educating the ignorant and advising the sufferer. The ignorance of some of the characters is well placed to inform those with similar opinions. Lacking dramatic imagination at times it often plays like an info-mercial, but should be praised for its no nonsense approach to educating a nation about a virus that’s stricken an ignored community in the US.

Latifah does a good job of playing the redemptive, but flawed Ana. Her character is wholly believable and the relationships surrounding her have a realism that’s rarely portrayed when HIV/AIDS is the subject.

Life Support [2007]
Studio: Warner Home Video
Released: 4 February 2008
ASIN: B000YPRGNK

Get Life Support and make your own mind up about this heartbreaking story. Buy it online and save yourself some money to put towards Loving Annabelle and Puccini For Beginners.