“Robin Campillo’s 120 Battements Par Minute [BPM (Beats Per Minute)] is a passionately acted ensemble movie about ACT UP in France in the late 80s, the confrontational direct-action movement which demanded immediate, large-scale research into AIDS,” begins the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw. “The movie compellingly combines elegy, tragedy, urgency and a defiant euphoria.”
“A rare and invaluable non-American view of the global health crisis that decimated, among others, the gay community in the looming shadow of the 21st century, Campillo’s unabashedly untidy film stands as a hot-blooded counter to the more polite strain of political engagement present in such prestige AIDS dramas as Philadelphia and Dallas Buyers Club,” writes Guy Lodge for Variety.
“Campillo introduces the founding members of the group through the eyes of newcomer Nathan (Arnaud Valois), who is quickly swept off his feet by the boisterous and charismatic Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), ACT UP’s most outspoken and passionate member,” writes Nikola Grozdanovic at the Playlist. “Sophie (Adèle Haenel) and Thibault (Antoine Reinartz) are not happy about the way Sean and Max (Félix Maritaud) derailed the last ACT UP protest by going off script and restraining the key speaker of the conference they were protesting. These ACT UP debates, of which there are many, with each more immersive than the last, are elemental to the rhythm, humility and humanity that’s ingrained so deeply in 120 BPM.”
“This isn’t a characteristic project for Campillo, best known to English-language audiences for The Returned, his Twin Peaks-like TV series about small town residents who come back from the dead, and Eastern Boys, a taut gay thriller in which Russian men posing as prostitutes rob an older man,” suggests IndieWire’s Eric Kohn. “120 Beats Per Minute contains no such far-reaching hooks, instead bearing a closer resemblance to the social-realism of Campillo’s screenwriting with collaborator Laurent Cantet, which includes the Palme d’Or-winning high school drama The Class. Like that movie, the main narrative engine of 120 Beats Per Minute is talk—profound debates, casual chatter, furious showdowns—and the sturdy performances that bring it to life.”
“It’s no wonder many are putting the film on the short list for the Palme d’Or,” finds Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson. “Regardless of whether the film wins awards, it’s a vital contribution to queer and political cinema, a testament to crusaders of recent history whose nobility does not overshadow their complicated and individual humanity.”
But for Donald Clarke of the Irish Times, “120 Beats is a surprisingly conventional, borderline-vanilla piece of work that fails to properly flesh out its romance or explore the intricacies of its social agendas. When such a film scores its big moment of activism to Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’—a fine song, but familiar—it’s hard not to wish they’d tried just a little harder. At such points, the cosy British film Pride feels less distant than the filmmakers can surely have intended.”
“Drawing inspiration from his own experience as a member of frontline protest organization ACT UP, Campillo brings unquestionable conviction to his mission to ensure that the ineffectual efforts of Francois Mitterand's government at the time and the refusal of French drug companies to expedite treatment research are not forgotten,” writes David Rooney in the Hollywood Reporter. “Where the screenwriter and editor-turned-director shows less strength is in his sense of economy and pacing.”
“There is a documentary-style urgency to early scenes that feel like eavesdropping on an underground resistance engaged in a war,” notes Allan Hunter in Screen.
“Campillo’s film has a furious forward momentum that’s inspired by the determination of its characters and bolstered by Arnaud Rebotini’s house-music score,” writes Time Out’s Dave Calhoun. “But that same forward movement is occasionally shackled and slowed down by the weight of mourning and loss. This sagging of the shoulders—the lows after the highs—feels appropriate and true, of course, but coupled with some meandering of the story it means that the film can lag and stall. It’s in its more private moments that 120 Beats excels.”
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