'Beats Per Minute' Movie Review: A Rousing French AIDS Drama
Robin Campillo
Campillo  and  his  co-writer Philippe Mangeot were both involved with ACT UP Paris in the early 1990s  when the film is set  and they drew on their experiences in scripting the movie. That authenticity shines through constantlyâthis is a film that operates on a granular level and finds real tension in debates over the meaning and manner of dissent. As an ode to the gay community  Beats Per Minute is necessarily insular and sometimes claustrophobic  a reminder of a time not long ago when the AIDS crisis was both roundly ignored and deeply stigmatized.
All of the most riveting human drama in Robin Campilloâs Beats Per Minute takes place in a cramped lecture hall somewhere in Paris  at the site of a weekly meeting of the cityâs chapter of the HIV-AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. This is an epic period film about that small room  filled with dozens of activists who helped shape a global conversation  and their story is heartbreakingly relevant to the ways people think about protest to this day. Beats Per Minute is 140 minutes long  and the majority of that running time is devoted to those crowded discussionsâbut every second is full of life.
The first meeting in the film starts with the ACT UP member Eva (AloÃ¯se Sauvage) giving a straightforward eulogy for a founding member of the chapter who recently died of AIDS-related complications. Her tone is not without emotion  nor is it resigned  but you get the impression itâs the sort of speech sheâs had to give many times before. That hint of realism turns even mundane  clerical exchanges into something riveting. Rather than simply using these organizing meetings to deliver blank expositional dialogue   Campillo  lets them run on and on  forcing viewers to engage with the nitty-gritty of the issue rather than concentrate on its lurid aspects.
Not that the director shies away from more sensational moments. The scenes of direct action are surprising  enervating  and occasionally shocking as the group finds what lines theyâre willing to push up against and others theyâre prepared to fully cross.  Campillo  also shows  his  heroes dancing at clubs  marching in pride parades  and falling in love with each other. But whether  he âs focusing on the political or the personal   he  never zooms out  giving an impression of just how isolated the gay-rights activist community might have felt in the early â90s.
Campillo  and  his  co-writer Philippe Mangeot were both involved with ACT UP Paris in the early 1990s  when the film is set  and they drew on their experiences in scripting the movie. That authenticity shines through constantlyâthis is a film that operates on a granular level and finds real tension in debates over the meaning and manner of dissent. As an ode to the gay community  Beats Per Minute is necessarily insular and sometimes claustrophobic  a reminder of a time not long ago when the AIDS crisis was both roundly ignored and deeply stigmatized.
All of the most riveting human drama in Robin Campilloâs Beats Per Minute takes place in a cramped lecture hall somewhere in Paris  at the site of a weekly meeting of the cityâs chapter of the HIV-AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. This is an epic period film about that small room  filled with dozens of activists who helped shape a global conversation  and their story is heartbreakingly relevant to the ways people think about protest to this day. Beats Per Minute is 140 minutes long  and the majority of that running time is devoted to those crowded discussionsâbut every second is full of life.
The first meeting in the film starts with the ACT UP member Eva (AloÃ¯se Sauvage) giving a straightforward eulogy for a founding member of the chapter who recently died of AIDS-related complications. Her tone is not without emotion  nor is it resigned  but you get the impression itâs the sort of speech sheâs had to give many times before. That hint of realism turns even mundane  clerical exchanges into something riveting. Rather than simply using these organizing meetings to deliver blank expositional dialogue   Campillo  lets them run on and on  forcing viewers to engage with the nitty-gritty of the issue rather than concentrate on its lurid aspects.
Not that the director shies away from more sensational moments. The scenes of direct action are surprising  enervating  and occasionally shocking as the group finds what lines theyâre willing to push up against and others theyâre prepared to fully cross.  Campillo  also shows  his  heroes dancing at clubs  marching in pride parades  and falling in love with each other. But whether  [TGT]  [TGT]  âs focusing on the political or the personal    [TGT]   never zooms out  giving an impression of just how isolated the gay-rights activist community might have felt in the early â90s.