The New York Film Festival presents BPM (Beats Per Minute) tonight and tomorrow, and we begin with Jordan Cronk, writing for Cinema Scope: “A sprawling yet affectingly personal portrait of a group of Parisian activists and ACT UP members in the early ’90s, Robin Campillo’s follow-up to the ambitious social thriller Eastern Boys (2013) is defined by a nuanced understanding of group dynamics and the delicate nature of sociopolitical resistance—traits no doubt informed by the Moroccan-born French filmmaker’s firsthand experience as part of the storied AIDS organization during the same period. . . . BPM (which took home the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes) doubles down on the writer-director’s vernacular interests, presenting the ACT UP meetings as raucous and passionate displays of anger, compassion, and fraught solidarity.”
“Much of the film is spent indoors, obsessively steeped in the debate that ACT UP Paris’s members have about the ethical, practical, and logistical implications of their actions,” writes Slant’s Ed Gonzalez. “These debates are never less than impassioned, and the anger with which words are sometimes volleyed about here is always understood to come not from a place of hate, but from a place of fear . . . That the sounds of finger-snapping and hissing throughout these meetings are so intuitively understood as substitutes for the more disruptive clangor of applause and boos, respectively, is just one of the ways that Campillo and co-screenwriter Philippe Mangeot convey how the rhetoric of AIDS activism has evolved in the short years since ACT UP’s founding in New York.”
“The story eventually settles on one relationship, between newcomer Nathan (Arnaud Valois) and vocal, lively activist Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart),” notes Bilge Ebiri in the Village Voice. “The former’s awakening—going from novice to fully engaged activist, and from shy, hunky wallflower to lover and caretaker—is a poignant reminder of how, in the darkest of times, finding one’s tribe and sense of purpose can make all the difference.”
“The difference between liking and loving BPM might hinge on your reaction to how the restive public panoramas of the first half give way to more intimate dramas in the second,” suggests Nick Davis in Film Comment. “Is Campillo rooting politics where it belongs, in the personal, or somewhat narrowing his vision? . . . This is pedagogical cinema made warm and rousing—lively, and against heavy odds.”
“It's true that the film is setting up a fairly clear-cut division between theory and practice, or perhaps more accurately between social and personal activism,” writes Michael Sicinski. And “I would argue that this relationship means something unique in context, coming as it does after the meticulous examination of the organization, function, and direct actions of ACT-UP Paris. It is literally a love that has been won through struggle, something these men fought for to the very last.”
In Gay City News, Steve Erickson suggests that “Campillo’s lack of prudishness is distinctly un-American: one scene starts with the beginnings of sex, turns into a discussion of how Sean became HIV-positive, and eventually turns back into an explicit sex scene. The finale crosscuts among sex, dancing, and a protest: pretty much every base is covered.”
For Cosmo Bjorkenheim at Screen Slate, “despite its 144-minute runtime, BPM never drags. That's because, if you're like me, you'll find yourself taken in by this community of militants, embraced as an adoptive son.”
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Earlier: Reviews from Cannes.
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