When a mother tearfully kisses her dying son goodbye, we have little choice but to feel the moment, just as our feet have little choice but to kick when a physician taps on our knees.

Good intentions aside, that's the extent of the craftsmanship in Thom Fitzgerald's elegiac AIDS saga "The Event": unbearably painful situations that needle our sympathetic reflexes.

Aside from a pounding performance by Olympia Dukakis as the bereaved mom in question, the filmmaking is capricious and erratic, dampening what might have been a compelling plea for the legalization of assisted
suicide.

Indie-movie mainstay Parker Posey is gruesomely miscast as Nicole "Nick" DeVivo, an assistant district attorney investigating a suspicious string of suicides by terminally ill AIDS patients in and around New York City's predominantly gay Chelsea district.

Inexplicably bitter and mean-spirited (in one scene, she fills a cup with toilet water and hands it to a thirsty witness), Nicole comes to focus on one victim in particular: Matt Shapiro (Don McKellar from "Last Night"), a professional cellist who apparently attended a party in his honor on the night of his death. Matt's soiree is euphemistically referred to as "the
event" by his close circle of friends.

Over the course of Nicole's investigation, the events leading up to Matt's death unfold in flashback, including his affair with an AIDS outreach worker (Brent Carver) and his confession of illness to his sister (Sarah Polley from "Go"). The emotional quality of the filmmaking is almost tidal — some scenes are powerful; others feel blatantly artificial, including a sequence in which uniformed NYPD officers unceremoniously burst into the homes of Matt's friends and cart them off like the Gestapo. Like many of his Canadian countrymen, Fitzgerald (“The Hanging Garden”) seems warm to the idea that Americans live in a police state.

Posey — with her vampy hauteur — doesn't exactly give off tough attorney vibes. For the first time in her career, she looks desperate to be taken seriously. Ultimately, inevitably, she sheds the rancor and reveals a softer, more compassionate side, but by that time we've lost interest.

Unlike Dukakis ushering her poor son into that good night, we just can't feel her.

'The Event'
Starring: Parker Posey, Olympia Dukakis, Don McKellar
Playing: Opens Friday exclusively at Madstone in Chandler
Rating: R (sexuality, profanity, adult
themes)
Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Grade: C