120 battements par minute (Beats Per Minute) (2017)

June 18, 2021 10:28 PM

César and Cannes winning fictionalized account of ACT UP Paris and AIDS and AIDS activism in the 90s.

An Interview with writer/director Robin Campillo.

I found it streaming on Kanopy (available through many libraries)

posted by latkes (1 comment total)

I found this very beautiful and resonant and familiar. The movie shows the political arguments and factions, the thrill and urgency of confrontational action, the vitality of collective sexuality and movement and youth, fucking and laughing and arguing and yelling and lots of 90s jeans/leather jackets/boots/tank tops. The pace is leisurely which is good by me. I'm getting interested in how rare it is to watch movies about a group of people doing things together (rather than about a daiad or a single person), and I thought this film was especially unusual in showing how people can work together as comrades even without liking each other, and showing the thread of queer culture that includes an honestly and frankness about sexual desire that doesn't fit into the hetero/monogamous box.

It's one little slice of history and life, and does not show - nor purport to show - all of queerdom or all of AIDS or all of Paris, but just this little but loud and brave and committed world that changed things.
posted by latkes at 10:35 PM on June 18, 2021