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Reaction and Analysis on Film and Stage Version of "Rent"

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Reaction and Analysis on Film and Stage Version of "Rent"
FILM REACTION

Rent is a 2005 American film adaptation of the Broadway musical, which was based on Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning musical. The movie depicts the lives of several Bohemians and their struggles with sexuality, cross-dressing, drugs, life under the shadow of AIDS, and paying their rent. It takes place in the East Village of New York City in the late 1980s.

SYNOPSIS
After an introduction with the cast singing "Seasons of Love," the film opens with apartment tenants expressing their anger with suddenly being asked to pay rent which had previously been waived by the landlord. Collins, a former roommate of Mark's and friend to both Mark and Roger, returns from out of town and is attacked by three men and left for dead in an alley ("Rent"). Benny, the landlord and former roommate of Mark and Collins, who has married into a wealthy family, offers to give Mark and Roger free rent again if they can convince Maureen to stop her protest. The protest is to take place at Maureen's performance space which Benny is planning to to turn into a cyber-cafe

Angel Dumott Schunard, who is an AIDS-positive drag queen drummer, meets Collins, who is also AIDS-positive, in the alley. We learn that these two characters are romantically interested in each other. Later that night, Roger mourns the loss of his girlfriend April, who committed suicide after learning she had HIV, and sings of his desire to write one lasting song before his own death from HIV Mimi, a night club dancer addicted to heroin, enters Roger's apartment and flirts with him

The next morning, Roger and Mark meet Angel, who performs a song-and-dance number for them Angel invites them to join him and Collins at a meeting at a local community center. Roger declines but Mark accepts, telling them he will be there after he goes to help Maureen, who had called and asked for help with a technical problem. Mark goes to help Maureen, only to meet Joanne Jefferson, Maureen's new lover. They talk

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