Unbeaten heart
Intriguing French director Robin Campillo staggered with the unpredictably shifting ground of his erotically charged second feature Eastern Boys. His epic follow up, BPM (120 Battements Par Minute), is no less form fracturing - this time offering an erratically episodic insight into activism group ACT UP’s fight for community survival at the height of the AIDS crisis in '80s Paris.
A living, breathing history of the French chapter of the group founded in New York, theirs is a personal-is-political battle against Francois Mitterand's disgracefully intransigent government and the inaction of big pharmas. Pulsing with the passion of protest, BPM’s all the more poignant because Campillo was on the front line.
An ACT UP member in the '90s who took part in the organisation’s militant actions - including fake blood bombing offices and blocking the streets with fallen members’ funeral processions – his integrity is imprinted on every frame.
Source: MIFF
Winning a brace of awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including the Grand Prize of the Jury and the Queer Palm, it stars Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as the impassioned and uncompromising Sean and Arnaud Valois’ strong silent type Nathan.
An impishly mercurial figure prone to impassioned outbursts followed by surly retreats, HIV-positive Sean’s health and mental state is fast deteriorating, compounded by the toxicity of early drug treatments and the deadly lack of clarity from the authorities. Nathan’s negative status puts him at odds with some members, but the speed with which he falls for Sean after an unexpected kiss ensures he becomes both a dependable shoulder and an electrically charged lover as they negotiate a serodiscordant relationship.
Co-written with fellow activist Philippe Mangeot, Campillo captivates during ACT UP planning meetings, during which we see the breadth of community engagement often skimmed over by other HIV/AIDS-focused films. Adèle Haenel is brilliant as campaign organiser and lesbian Sophie, resistant along with Antoine Reinartz’ Thibault (who also has eyes for Nathan) to more violent approaches. We also see a mother and her son and other straight allies.
Source: MIFF
That this group is diverse in gender, sexuality and race is reflected in the internal conflicts over how best to react. Far from dry, these scenes snap with the sass of clicked fingers, used in place of applause so debate is uninterrupted.
When physical protest does occur, cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie captures their furious choreography in a mesmeric fashion mirrored by the film’s fantastic club scenes. By the time Bronski Beat is deployed in the film’s heartbreaking final act, the grinding weight of what they are fighting for hits hard. And yet Campillo has the nerve to hold strong and still, witnessing the love and hope left in loss long after others would have faded to black.
Source: MIFF
Electric closet
The conflict in American director Eliza Hittman’s sophomore feature Beach Rats is largely of the internal kind, until -explosively - it isn’t.
Set amidst the electric glimmer, pulsing techno and erupting fireworks of Brooklyn’s boardwalk fairgrounds, this remarkable film, which scored Hittman the Best Director (Dramatic) gong at Sundance, is as far from the middle class concerns of Lena Dunham’s Girls as it’s possible to be.
Sculpted Brit Harris Dickinson, who came close to landing the role of furrowed brow farmer Johnny in Francis Lee’s sweeping , is a revelation in the lead role of Frankie. A working class lad whose dad is slowly dying of a terminal illness in the front room of the family home, he spends his days patrolling the beach, smoking dope and popping pills with his similarly aimless mates. All macho bravado and topless tussles, their keenly observed and compared heterosexuality is tinged with the boisterously affectionate homoeroticism of all young men soaking up the summer’s heat.
While his physical appeal to shop clerk Simone (Madeline Weinstein) is obvious, Frankie’s guarded feelings towards her are less so. Unlike the ACT UP ensemble, he’s a man of precious few words and even less emotional communication, wearing his chiselled but baby face like a mask against a world in which he seems in no hurry to find his place.
Shutting down a trip to Manhattan for their first date establishes the small realm over which he lords it. An initial attempt at sex in his basement hang out ends in what turns out to be recurring disappointment, with an excellent alternative title suggested in their underwhelming fumblings in a moored boat night club’s electric closet. Twice he refuses to answer Simone when asked, “am I pretty?”
Source: MIFF
Late at night, Frankie’s inner turmoil is unveiled. Posing for shadowy, topless selfies, cap pulled down to obscure his emotionally blank visage, he cruises for older men online. Even here, though, his desires are obfuscated.
When asked if what he sees turns him on by one would-be webcam suitor, you sense the kernel of truth in his oblique answer, “I don’t know what I like”. While the uniform characteristics of the mature tops he eventually meets in furtive beachside bush-shrouded beats would suggest otherwise, anyone who has confronted the internal battles of nascent queer identity in an unkind environment will recognise the reality warping powers of self-denial.
Captured in suitably hazy 16mm by French cinematographer Hélène Louvart and set to Nicholas Leone’s pulsing score, Hittman restlessly paces the holding places of Frankie’s shifting sexual identity. Resisting the path most walked in coming-of-age stories, the barriers to love remain both self and societally imposed, erupting into the violence of complicit homophobia encroaching on his narrowly defined world.
Source: MIFF
Beach Rats is particularly savvy in its interrogation of his mates’ hypocrisy, castigating casual experimentation between curious men while lusting after the female equivalent. It’s an unforgiving world in which to dabble, but he’s young yet. Hittman’s brilliant film offers just enough promise in its final moments that a future barely glimpsed, like BPM, can offer the fever dream of something better.
The runs until August 20. Book tickets to see BPM on August 18 and Beach Rats on August 19 here.
