Adapted from prolific and influential composer Michael John LaChiusa’s successful 1994 Off-Broadway musical of the same name, Hello Again centers around ten different characters who become connected through an erotic chain of pansexual trysts that span across the ten decades that make up the 20th century. Only the fourth Off-Broadway musical to be adapted into a film, Hello Again takes its inspiration from the famous 1897 play La ronde, by Arthur Schnitzler, which has twice previously been brought to the screen: Max Ophüls’s Oscar-nominated 1950 version and Roger Vadim’s 1964 version starring a young Jane Fonda (both titled La ronde).

Here, the time-hopping daisy chain of musical bed-hopping begins with the always wonderful Martha Plimpton, who leads a star-studded cast that also includes Cheyenne Jackson (American Horror Story), T.R. Knight (Grey’s Anatomy), Rumer Willis (Hostage) Jenna Ushkowitz (Glee), and the most lauded performer on Broadway, six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald (Porgy and Bess). Director Tom Gustafson has teamed up again with writer Cory Krueckeberg, following their marvelous boys-high-school-set musical Were the World Mine (Frameline32), for this moving and lusty portrait of the 20th century that shows that, through both music and sex, the universal desire to connect with other people goes well beyond sexual orientation.

— SÉVERINE SOREL