by Murtada
Of all the movies that unspooled at this year’s ongoing Cannes Film Festival, the one that got this writer most excited is 120 Battements Par Minute (120 Beats Per Minute). The movie has gotten almost unanimous praise and is expected by many to nab a major prize at the festival. Update: And it won the Queer Palme award as expected.
Campillo (center) and his cast at Cannes
Let’s count the reasons to be excited about it after the jump. I lied, not 120 reasons, but here are 9...
- While many are trying to mobilize and resist the encroaching threats to our rights, to our lives, this could become a movie of this moment.
- Robin Campillo the writer and director. He wrote the Palme winning The Class (2008), wrote and directed the gripping and taut thriller Eastern Boys (2013).
- Campillo and his writing partner Philippe Mangeot were both active members of ACT UP in the 90s, so they are writing what they know. This is personal to them which could make it riveting for us.
- Reportedly the ACT UP meeting scenes have an immediacy and passion to them that feels authentic.
- And the film doesn’t shy away from the gay sex, unlike all of the American films that covered the same era.
- The central performance by Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart has received a lot of critical praise. He plays Sean, a young HIV-positive radical activist who meets and falls in love with another activist (Arnaud Valois, pictured center above) while fighting for his life. If the film doesn’t win a prize, expect Perez Biscayart to win best actor.
- Adele Haenel. We’ve loved her in Suzanne (2013), Love at First Fight (2014), House of Tolerance (2011) and Water Lillies (2007). Even in the uneven Dardennes Bros The Unknown Girl (2016), she was immensely watchable. Here she has a supporting part as another activist who’s more moderate than Sean.
- US distribution rights have been secured and the film will open her later this year.
- This Trailer.
We are obviously 100% Yes for this film. Are you a Yes, No or Maybe So?