"120 battements par minute" or "120 Beats Per Minute" or "BPM (Beats Per Minute)" is a new French 2017 movie that runs for a massive 2 hours and 20 minutes. This one was written and directed by Moroccan filmmaker Robin Campillo and it may be his biggest success so far looking at the movie's awards recognition. It is also France's official Oscar submission and we will see how far it gets there. The subject sure deserves to make an impact as this is about the group ACT UP in France over 2 decades ago who were fighting for a better life for H.I.V. patients at that time and opposing those standing in its way like political institutions struggling to inform students properly on the subject of sex education or medical companies most of all, who put their financial interest over those suffering from this horrible illness. I personally think that this is a subject that really deserves the attention and also one that has not got it yet to the extent it should. Normally you find H.I.V. plots and references only in side stories in films. It's good this one was made. It is important. The cast includes mostly up-and-coming young actors that I as a German audience member must say I did not know before watching this one. Maybe Frenchies will know them. The one exception here would be Adele Haenel, who also probably gave my favorite female performance. As for the males, I quite liked Reinartz and of course Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, who eventually probably turns into the movie's MVP, something I did not expect early on. Admittedly, he also has great material, but he also made the most of it.

Impressively, the film never really drags despite running for almost 150 minutes, at least not to me. I personally enjoyed the moments involving the group (also the introduction to the group early on during which the camera basically treats us like an actually new member, very well done) more than those focusing on the members' individual lives, like especially the love relationship between the new member and old member, but this also got a lot more interesting the longer it went when things take a turn for the worse sadly. And eventually, there is this coming together between the group element and the individual member element and I quite liked that too. The most powerful moment was probably the graveyard reenactment with the crosses, I'm sure ou know what I mean, that was truly touching. Another thing I liked was that they did not show the group as a mass of everybody thinking the same and agreeing on everything with each other. Discussion and conflict were vital in making the right decisions and moving closer to finding common goals and reaching them. Watching this show will in fact make you want to be a part of this movement and wants you to join the group in one way or the other as they all seemed friends sticking together closely, even if their opinions may differ frequently. As for the very ending, we got the evidence that a life may have been lost, but the movement only gets stronger and everybody sticks even closer together with each other. Plus the way they went from loud to completely silent the moment the credits roll in was a smart decision as the film offers really a lot to think about.

Honestly, I must say I am not too sure if the Oscars will go for this one here due to the subject and running time, but I will cheer for them for sure and would be happy to see them nominated. The win is a long shot though with Sweden perhaps being in the best spot at this point. But at least 120 BPM did not go comnpletely overlooked this season. It is one of the best 10, maybe even 5, films I have seen all year and I highly recommend checking it out. Combining the general movement with individual stories may certainly have been a good decision here and the execution is close to flawless also in terms of the technical production values. These also added to this being an unapologetically bold, radical movie full of energy, full of emotion and full of grief. But most of all full of progress about a group that shaped the way for generations to come. H.I.V. may not be one of the most controversial topics in the western world these days, but we should not take that for granted and thank those who were blazing the trail. So get a good set of subtitles (unless you are fluent in French) and watch this one on the next occasion you get. Highly highly recommended, it's rare to see a touching political movie these days, but this really works so well from start to finish in that department that you really don't want to miss out. No excuses. See it.

If "BPM" had been made in, say, the early 1990s, it would have been an urgent clarion call hard to ignore. But in 2018 one looks to movies about the AIDS epidemic to tell us some things we don't already know, and this film feels strangely anachronistic.

It's not like I'm naive enough to believe that everything about the disease and those who suffer from it is hunky dory now. But medical and cultural progress has come a long way since AIDS first emerged on the grim horizon, and this film feels like a public service message released too late to do any good. I would have been satisfied with a film chronicling the early days of the AIDS activist movement, which this movie promises to be in its opening scenes. But what I didn't need was a prolonged film about one young man dying slowly from the disease. Do I need another movie convincing me that AIDS is a horrible thing to die from?

There was a lot of head scratching when the Academy Award nominations for 2017 were announced and "BPM" wasn't on the list for Best Foreign Language Film. That head scratching was what led me to see it. Now that I have, I don't think the Academy made a misstep in overlooking it.

Grade: B

Drawing on his and his co-writer Philippe Mangeot's personal experiences, French queer filmmaker Robin Campillo's third feature BPM (BEATS PER MINUTE) vehemently re-enacts the activism of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) group's Paris branch in the early 90s during the hiking AIDS pandemic.

As a César awards' BEST FILM recipient, BPM emanates immersive intimacy that foremost registers the immediacy of status quo, whether it is their hands-on non-violent protests on various occasions aiming at the government's inaction and apathy, the pharmaceutical corporate's sloth and cupidity in the form of immoral hunger marketing, or, predominantly, during their convocations where members contend, dispute and express their ideas and methods in a diplomatic fashion, met with either approving finger-snapping or plain hissing. Campillo's method is unpretentiously engaging with his fly-on-the-wall lens, allots munificent time to studiously record the sparks-flying meetings and tries to reach as many individual's voices as possible, even sometimes it feels erring on the side of repetition because their situation is pretty dire while their adversity has no conscience to repent. Moreover, Campillo doesn't whitewash the internecine ill-will that inherently lives and breathes inside any sort of human congregation, best incarnated by the ambivalent relation between our protagonist Sean (Biscayart) and the group leader Thibault (Reinartz).

That tactile intimacy also flows in the veins of the central romance between Sean and Nathan (Valois),and it is the latter's novice perspective that serves as the guidance of leading audience into a terra incognita in the first place. Their interaction runs tellingly from full-on sexual congress that defies fear and embraces love, to their tête-à-têtes shedding lights on their respective past, until the later stage when Sean's vitality begins to be overtaken by the virus, where a sense of tacit understanding holds out during his last days (including one last lurid orgasm on his hospital bed).

The crunch to eventually put Sean out of misery which Nathan executes with superb efficiency on top of smoldered anguish, chimes in brilliantly with Campillo's clinically perceptive take on the concomitant aftermath of Sean's demise, repressed grief, wistful relief and an insidious dread that haunts the rest "pozs", a soul-eating hopelessness becomes a sign of the times for queer community.

On the less graver front, Campillo ascertains that mood is high in daylight Gay Pride marches and vibes are sensuous in fluorescent abandon on the dance floor, striking visual flourishes include a nightspot Tyndall effect being glisteningly transformed into a virulent aggression and a blood-soaked Seine imagined by a deteriorating Sean, as his silent last cri de coeur.

Performance-wise, Campillo marshals a cracking, preponderantly youthful cast that exudes passion and spontaneity, besides his usual vim-and-vigor, the Argentina-born Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is tasked with a grueling body-emaciation which he rounds off summa cum laude, a daunting transmogrification futher underlined by the diminished color in his bulging eyes; newcomer Arnaud Valois, counterbalances Biscayart with dignified aplomb and quietening restraint that immediately distinguishes him from rest of the stigmatized activists; both Antoine Reinartz and Adèle Haenel (who plays the avid lesbian activist Sophie),pull their backs into the heady contestation with zest and artistry, plus the former makes a good fist of showing the elusive complexity burdened by a leader figure.

Encompassing and melding the tripartite elements of queerness, politics and mortality, BPM is an intrepid critique that covers warts and all of a pyrrhic fight in its darkest years.