A Tale of AIDS, Outsiders in ‘Country’

Drained by long hours at the hospital and overwhelmed by the loss of life, a doctor with a burgeoning AIDS caseload in the mid-’80s says, “I feel as tainted by this disease as my patients are.”

“My Own Country,” a new cable film Sunday on Showtime, tells the true-life story of Dr. Abraham Verghese, an Indian immigrant who takes over as head of infectious diseases at a rural Tennessee hospital just as the first cases of AIDS are cropping up there. It’s a refreshingly original story, told by a refreshingly original team: director Mira Nair, whose films include “Salaam Bombay!” and “Mississippi Masala,” and a cast that includes Naveen Andrews, the Sikh bomb disposal expert who won Juliette Binoche’s heart in “The English Patient.” Marisa Tomei, Hal Holbrook and Swoosie Kurtz are also featured.

The story, based on Verghese’s memoir, begins in 1985, as the doctor, his wife and infant son return to small-town Johnson City, Tenn., where he had interned. He is considered an outsider by many in this small, insular town, and as the first cases of AIDS emerge, he finds himself caring for other outsiders: people marginalized and discriminated against because of their infection, their sexuality or both.

As adapted for the small screen by Jim Leonard Jr. and Sooni Taraporevala, the movie underestimates its viewers by reverting again and again into an introductory course on both AIDS and the gay community. Then again, perhaps there’s a lot we still need to learn.

Andrews is a captivating hero--handsome, intense and open-hearted. His failings, though, are what make him interesting. He becomes so involved with his patients that he neglects his own family--a situation that comes to a head when he all but overlooks the birth of his second child.

Tomei plays opposite her own brother, Adam Tomei, as a woman who tends to her brother when he returns home to die. Holbrook and Kurtz have small but poignant roles as a couple infected when he receives a tainted blood transfusion. Sean Hewitt and William Webster are heartbreaking as a gay couple, in love since boyhood, who are both infected. And Glenne Headly is riveting as an impoverished wife and mother who, with great effort, turns her rage at being infected by her unfaithful husband into a powerful force for change.

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* “My Own Country” debuts at 9 p.m. Sunday on Showtime. The cable network has rated it TV-14 (may be inappropriate for viewers younger than 14).