At the beginning of Before You Know It, main character Dennis rhapsodizes on how the young never think about getting old. I must be an outlier, because I think about getting old all the time. I think about mortality in general an awful lot, really. And that might be why movies like this, which look frankly at aging and death, resonate so deeply with me. That’s doubly the case with documentaries, which often don’t feel the need that fiction films do to sugarcoat their messages with notes of “You’ve still got it!” encouragement. And Before You Know It is no different on this front, tackling issues of growing old without sentimentality. In the process, it’s a lovely, quiet piece of work.

What sets the doc apart from others in its subgenre is its choice of subjects. Its trio of protagonists are all elderly gay men. The retirement set is already an ignored demographic in America’s youth-obsessed culture, and the queer section of that population is even less visible. But there are somewhere around two and a half million Americans over 55 who identify as LGBT. Director PJ Raval spent 3 years with three of them. Dennis is a Florida drag queen who was in the closet until very late in life and is now estranged from his family. Ty is a Harlem community organizer working for the effort to legalize gay marriage in New York. Robert is a flamboyant gay bar owner from Texas who’s slowly transitioning his business to his nephew’s control. Through these three stories, Raval suggests a multitude more that are waiting to be told.

Loneliness encroaches as you grow older. Your friends die, and it’s difficult to make new ones. In the case of gay seniors, the film suggests, this problem is even worse, because this is a generation already decimated by AIDS. Ty believes that the crisis also made many of them wary of commitment, lest they start relationships that abruptly end by tragedy. So there are more gay men facing the twilight years without any partner to speak of. In Robert’s case, it was not for lack of willingness to commit that he is now alone, but instead an illness in his partner that could have affected any couple, regardless of orientation. Dennis was married to a woman for most of his life. The men have to grapple with what they want from relationships now. Despite fighting for gay marriage, Ty isn’t sure that he wants to marry his boyfriend. Dennis struggles to reach out to others like him, eventually moving to a gay retirement community in Oregon as a solution. Robert can’t fill the hole left by his partner’s death, and doesn’t seem to want to.

At nearly 2 hours, Before You Know It is at least 20 minutes longer than it needed to be. Sometimes, the movie’s purposeful repetition works, like the two performances of a risque cover of “Mahna Mahna.” But other times, the film feels needlessly thinned out. One pride parade it showcases seems the same as any of the others. But that doesn’t dilute the movie’s tender sense of grace. This is a movie liable to make you cry, and it earns every tear.

Grade: B