Review of BPM (Beats per Minute) (2017) by Michaelobe — 19 Oct 2017

In the early 1990s, the AIDS epidemic in France reached its peak. Not indifferent Paris activists, members of the Act Up movement, organize street demonstrations, trying to resist the established silence in society and the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to share research results.

Being in the past an activist of such a movement, director Robin Kampillo creates an almost documentary portrait of the era when the desire to live, not survive, was spoken out loud. The film does not just talk about the problem of HIV infection, it screams about it. Loud and clear. That is why it is more painful to perceive that little has changed in more than twenty years.

Kampillo, from the very first scene, throws us into the thick of events, allowing us to become a viewer of the debates about methods of dealing with the suppression of the issue. Here the are: a self-confident Sophie (Adele Haenel), criticizing Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) and Max (Félix Maritaud) for overly aggressive methods, and imagining himself the leader Thibault (Antoine Reinartz), for whom any appearance on TV is already a victory. In this audience there are also newcomers, among whom Nathan (Arnaud Valois), who care about the fate of AIDS patients, and they are ready to help in organizing any protest action. The director does not divide the guys on the right and the guilty, the voice of everyone is important here, after all, the main thing - what are you manifesting, and not with what.

If in "Philadelphia" Jonathan Demme show AIDS too Hollywood, and Gus Van Sant in "Milk" told the story of one person through the prism of the struggle for freedom, the French "Beats per minute" is closest to the British drama "Pride"(2014), about the campaign "Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners". Kampillo succeeded in alternating important protests scenes and intimate episodes of the relationship between the two heroes. Neither long timing nor episodic publicism do not make it difficult to perceive the picture not only as a film-action, but also as a personal statement of a real participant of already distant events.