``It's My Party'' is gentle, and very sad, the story of a man whodiscovers that he has a short time to live, and throws a party for family andfriends, so that he can say goodbye before committing suicide. The story is notso concerned with his disease or his decision as with recording the emotionaltones that surround it, and watching the film is uncannily like going throughthe illness, death and memorial service of a loved one.

The dying man is Nick Stark (Eric Roberts). He has been HIV-positive foreight years. Now he experiences a series of small, troubling signs. He forgetshis keys. He drops a barbell at the gym. ``Get the scan,'' a friend says, and hedoes, and the test finds lesions on his brain. The full name of his condition isProgressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy, and it is depressing to discoverthat some of his friends can rattle that term right off.

Nick, a designer, was the lover for many years of Brandon (GregoryHarrison), a TV director, but they broke up after Nick tested positive. Painfulflashbacks show them fighting over their house and dog; Brandon brought most ofthe money to the relationship, and so it was Nick who moved out, to a littleframe house where the final party will be held. Telling his closest friends(including Charlene, played by Margaret Cho) that it is ``Time for Plan B'' andhe wants to die ``while I am still me,'' he goes through his Rolodex, making aninvitation list: ``Dead... dead... dull... dead...'' The centerpiece of the movie is Roberts' performance as the dying man. Thisis a quieter, gentler Eric Roberts than I've seen before. As the friends andfamily start to gather, he tries to comfort them, bringing to each one what hesenses they need. There is some laughter and a few macabre jokes, but basicallythe party (which stretches to two days because of some latecomers) consists ofNick at the epicenter, brave and sweet, surrounded in the corners of the roomsby many worried and sad conversations.

``Gay people get to choose their own families,'' one of Nick's friends says,``and he chose us.'' His biological family is also there: Lee Grant, as hisGreek mother, George Segal, as his Jewish father, and Marlee Matlin as hissister. It is clear, in a conversation they have, that his father never acceptedNick's homosexuality, and buried that and other issues in lifelong alcoholism.

The father tries to apologize, awkwardly.

The key event of the party is the arrival of Brandon, the former lover.

Nick's friends are hostile to him: They think he has his nerve. But Charleneinvited him because she senses that Nick will be happy to see him, and althoughthere is still anger and resentment, she is right. ``When he got sick, I guess Igot scared,'' Brandon confesses.

The idea of voluntary suicide, much in the news because of Dr.

Kevorkian, is treated here not as an issue but as an accepted choice. In anotherflashback, we see how Nick and others helped a friend of theirs who chose tokill himself. They leave him to die, and the next day they go to deal with thebody, only to discover that he is not yet quite dead. So they follow through.

This scene will cause the most discussion after the film, and indeed within thefilm Roddy McDowall plays a Catholic who argues that only God should decide whenwe die.

For Nick, whose vision is blurring and whose memory is fading, thechoice seems clear. By the end of the film, in a quiet, understated way,director and writer Randal Kleiser has created a genuine family feeling. This isnot one of those over-plotted constructions in which every character poses aproblem, and the screenplay assigns solutions. It's more three-dimensional andrealistic, showing how death, for all of its sadness, can sometimes create joy,if people are given the opportunity to affirm what they feel for one another. Itis not an end, but a passage. And some things finally get said that needed to besaid a long time earlier.