Queen Latifah really shows her dramatic chops as Ana Willis, an HIV positive, AIDS activist, former junkie in "Life Support."
But this is more a movie about family than disease. Ana signed over custody of her oldest daughter, Kelly (Rachel Nicks) to her mother 10 years earlier. Ana, her youngest daughter Kim (Rayelle Parker) and husband Slick (Wendell Pierce), also HIV positive, function as a family, but Ana and Kim really want Kelly around.
Ana is a hard working woman who takes her messages to the streets, sometimes with fatal results. She is told several times in the film that she is stubborn and selfish. The stubbornness is always there, but she is so selfless in her work that she is selfish in her personal life. She needs everything to be her way. But when Kelly's best friend the HIV positive Omari (Evan Ross) goes missing without his medication she is forced to readjust her outlook.
I really like the way this movie deals with AIDS and HIV. It could be any medicatable disease - high blood pressure, diabetes, MS... AIDS/HIV is important in this movie, more because of Omari than because of Slick, Ana or anyone else who works with her in the outreach group. The audience is reminded that disease can control a person's habits, in this case loads of medication and condom use are essential, but the disease does not make the sufferer less of a person.
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