User reviews

"BPM" (2017 release from France; 140 min.; original title "120 battements par minute" or "120 beats per minute") brings the story of a group of activists in Paris, France who are trying to raise awareness as to the deadly epidemic going through the gay community in the early 90s. As the movie opens, the Paris branch of ACT UP is welcoming 4 new members to its ranks. We witness the meeting where there is strong debate as to what action to take. Along the way, the movie focuses on one particular guy, Sean, as he struggles, health and otherwise. To tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest movie of French director Robin Campillo, who previously gave us the excellent "Eastern Boys". Here he goes a very different direction, looking back at the dark days when AIDS was raging and little or certainly not enough was done by the government (with multiple stabs at then-president Mitterand) and the pharmaceutical industry. One of the strengths of the movie is that Campillo on multiple occasions lets the scenes play out without hurrying. There is little or no music to speak off in the movie, and again that only results in the film being ever more impactful (the last 40 min. pack an emotional wallop). Even though the Sean character is central, the movie comes across as an ensemble piece, with lots of stellar performances. Last but certainly not least, when watching this, I couldn't help but think back to that other AIDS movie from 2 decades ago, the Tom Hanks-starring "Philadelphia", in the "Hollywood version" of what AIDS was about. "BPM" easily blows "Philadelphia" out of the water. Bottom line: regardless of how you personally feel about the AIDS epidemic in the early 90s, "BPM" brings a sobering look and is nothing short of a masterful movie.

"BPM" premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it was met with immediate critical acclaim (winning, among others, the "Grand Prix" award--in essence the silver medal as compared to the "Palm d'Or" gold medal). I happen to catch this movie during a recent family visit in Belgium. The early evening screening where I saw this at in Antwerp, Belgium, was attended very nicely, somewhat to my surprise. I would think this will eventually make it to US theaters, although given the nature of the film, this certainly cannot be taken for granted. If you have a chance to check it out, I'd encourage you to do so.

First premiered at Cannes where it won a Grand Prix, it's an impotant story of AIDS epidemic throughout the 90s in Paris and the actions taken by ACT UP organization founded to fight the epidemics.

This film does a great job at showing the activism at its thriving and not so thriving stages and introducing us to the stories of people until, at some point, a romance takes place while movie doesn't loose its quality and starts balancing two narratives.

Great casting, directing, sound choices. I will be happy to see two main actors in many new films waiting to see the light of day. They are proven talented and capable of taking demanding roles like ones showed here.

I noticed some unusual and smart ways of using sex scenes to deepen the background of the story, the story of one, also the one of the many.

Techo music was the music of the epidemic, 120 beats per minute, but at some point, heartbeat dismiss the techno and takes over, while the blood river flows though the city of Paris.

This movie is not perfect, but its flaws are outshone by its facets. The most sparkling among those is Arnaud Valois, who is smoking hot as Nathan, one of the ACT UP campaigners who this film follows. Good acting, a warm heart and a realism that is hard to find in big idea movies are also highlights of this film. Yes, an awful lot of it takes place in meetings in a lecture theatre, but these scenes actually had my heart racing, so true were they to the reality of activist politics - trying to decide if you should speak up or let a point pass, understanding both sides of an argument but knowing that the purpose of a meeting is to make a choice, hating someone's ideology but trying to maintain a working relationship with them. In this way, the movie finds its relevance to today. If politics is to be taken back from careerists and corporations to instead deal with real problems such as climate change and growing income and wealth inequality, it will require everyday people to take their cue from 120 Battements Par Minute and turn up to meetings, argue points of order and collectively decide how to act.

The two main shortcomings of the film are its earnestness and its length. Even just cutting fifteen minutes from it could have made the film easier to take, and there is probably half an hour that could have gone. In some ways it's stuck trying to tell a Hollywood story at a European pace, and as a consequence it does drag at times.

I was prepared for the earnestness, as I had seen the previews, but there are still a few times when it felt more like instruction than entertainment. However, there are also moments of levity and it's worth giving up an extra half hour of your time to see a film that is as profound, important and relevant as this one.

I feel like there have been many films with a similar premise to this, but this one really stands out in its execution. It manages to be both an intense, sensitive character study and a grander film about the scope of a very important political movement. The direction is really fantastic, and while I think the film is longer than it should be, the performances really make the whole thing worth it. They are fantastic.

Tragic account of the early 90s AIDS epidemic, and the actions of a group of activists in Paris. It's a very dialogue heavy film but also intertwines a tender love story. Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is absolutely astounding as 'Sean'. And the acting is so hugely impressive across the board, it almost feels like the viewer is attending the activists weekly meetings at times. A powerful film.

A story with a particular historical moment in mind has been rendered timeless. A random first generation Gameboy generates a temporal whiplash, as the film's events are portrayed as contemporary catastrophes. Silence equates to death, and the team meeting in a college lecture hall has dwindling numbers, yet deafening shouts.

A prejudicial plague scorches France, bringing an already tight-knit community into a blood brotherhood. ACT UP is a guerrilla group full of eventual corpses. The HIV epidemic has threatened their love and survival. Pharmaceutical companies have cubical indifference as antidotes are sluggishly distributed by financial logistics.

As the non-violent vigilantes face just as many internal conflicts as press-generated woes, their operations grow in scale and creativity. Their weekly conferences have an intentional cadence complete with respectful snaps, hisses, and hand signals designed to facilitate the mutual understanding that has gone extinct beyond the university walls.

Sean is one of he founding members, and has some of the worst test results. He is the loudest in any given demonstration, and celebrates harder than all his peers. ACT UP is Sean's final lifeline, and his involvement resounds as a funeral dirge among a thunderous parade.

Campillo has delivered another dialogue driven barrage of human desperation. The sprinkling of establishing shots offer a reprieve from the claustrophobic disputes between the positives and the businessmen impartial to death. An important angle to an understated tragedy that shaped legislation in the most vital ways.

"BPM (Beats Per Minute)" (France 2017) With this film I have finally completed watching the Trifecta of Great Queer Cinema of 2017! Set in the early 1990's, this is the story of ACT UP -- Paris, a rebel activist group composed of those infected with HIV/AIDS and their allies. Their mission: to educate the public on HIV/AIDS & safe sex practices; to change the public perception and dialogue of the epidemic; and to pressure politicians and pharmaceutical companies to take action in the fight against HIV/AIDS. At times the film (clocking in at nearly 2 & 1/2 hours) drags a bit...especially when delving into some of the medical/scientific specifics of HIV or the laborious in-house debates at ACT UP's weekly meetings. But, the end result is a powerful, dark, and heavy testimony to the importance of political activism....and the struggles many in our community faced during the early days of the AIDS Era. Intermixed are themes of friendship, the power of community, and seeking love in the face of fear. This film is not as easy to watch at "Call Me By Your Name" or "God's Own Country" but certainly worth the added effort! [5/5]

120 BPM takes us convincingly into the world of Parisien HIV activists in the early 1990's. The people feel authentic, so does their everyday life with the deadly disease and the way they talk about it. The many sessions of ACT UP PARIS are vibrant and makes an outsider understand the many sides of this particular battle.

But where was this movie 20 years ago when it was really needed? Or even ten years ago? And why is it half an hour longer than it needs to be? Even though the movie is intelligent and the cast is excellent, it really overstays its welcome. In a roundabout way, this is highlighted by the fact that this very talky movie is at its best when there is no dialogue. Images of raves and lights and dust are beautiful and more cinematic than the rest of it all.

120 BPM is an easy movie to recommend for its ideas, but as a piece of cinema, I don't understand its critiqueless reception. This movie about desire (for life, for sex, for justice, for attention) leaves a lot to be desired.

(120) Beats per minute is a great french movie which deals with the AIDS epidemic, set in France in 90s. A must-see film. I think probably one of the best movie of the year. Awards : "Grand prix" and Queer palm of Cannes film festival 2017. So, talk about it with your (girs/boy)friend(s),parents and even pets. Enjoy this movie ; )

If "BPM" had been made in, say, the early 1990s, it would have been an urgent clarion call hard to ignore. But in 2018 one looks to movies about the AIDS epidemic to tell us some things we don't already know, and this film feels strangely anachronistic.

It's not like I'm naive enough to believe that everything about the disease and those who suffer from it is hunky dory now. But medical and cultural progress has come a long way since AIDS first emerged on the grim horizon, and this film feels like a public service message released too late to do any good. I would have been satisfied with a film chronicling the early days of the AIDS activist movement, which this movie promises to be in its opening scenes. But what I didn't need was a prolonged film about one young man dying slowly from the disease. Do I need another movie convincing me that AIDS is a horrible thing to die from?

There was a lot of head scratching when the Academy Award nominations for 2017 were announced and "BPM" wasn't on the list for Best Foreign Language Film. That head scratching was what led me to see it. Now that I have, I don't think the Academy made a misstep in overlooking it.

Grade: B

'120 Battements par minute' is about the protest movement Act Up Paris, which tried to put aids on the map as a major problem. The film is set about thirty years ago, when there was no efficient treatment yet against aids. There is at least one other film about this era and about this theme: 'Dallas Buyers Club'. Both films show how desperate aids patients were to get their hands on promising new medication. Both films show what the disease can do to a human being. Both films show the ignorance and prejudice of that period.

The American film is a clever, well-made and well-written film in which the development of the lead character is central. But the French movie is slow-moving, lacks any suspense and doesn't seem to have any central focal point.

It starts by showing, in excruciating length, the weekly meetings of the Act Up members, who more often than not embark on endless discussions about something as mundane as the slogan for a campaign poster. They also try to disturb official meetings, and invade a pharmaceutical company which refuses to release the test results of a certain kind of drug.

This last story element offers some dramatic possibilities, but the film makers don't elaborate on it. This becomes clear when, in one scene, the managers of the pharmaceutical company are invited to explain their policy to the Act Up members. Instead of showing this exchange of differing opinions, and thus creating some much-needed dramatic development, the story moves away from the pharmaceutical company to the experiences of one individual Act Up member. Suddenly, he becomes the protagonist, and we see him struggling with the disease.

Throughout the whole film, I kept on thinking: what's the point? Where is this story heading? Why is the first half of the film about a group of people fighting for a cause, and the second half about one individual fighting against a disease? The problem is also that the urgency is gone. Most of the things Act Up is angry about, are solved now. Very few people in the western world die of aids anymore, and everyone is aware of what the risk factors are. The makers of 'Dallas Buyers Club' knew this. That film was not so much about aids, it was about how one particular man handled aids. In '120 Battements par minute', the disease is still very much the lead character.

This film remains timely despite it's historical perspective of French Protesting to advance HIV research and viable medical treatment. Funding is always precarious as politics, stereotypes and access to prevention remains limited almost 40 years later. Definitely a film to see.

120 BPM. A film set in the 90s about a group of AIDS activists (most of whom were HIV+) who all want justice and proper healthcare for the afflicted, which they argue was deliberately being witheld for political and financial motivation. However, they don't agree on how they should vent their protestations.

With the above synopsis, this sounds right up my street and I so wanted to love this film. But for me it took too long to get going.... It wasn't helped that early in the film much of the (very wordy) dialogue was white subtitles on a clear backdrop, making it very difficult to read (and the French do seem to talk fast)...

An hour in and the film still hadn't grabbed me - despite, not because of, the subject matter. However, as Sean condition worsens and you see the impact on the ones who love him, the film eventually drew me in and I became emotially involved.

I'm pleased I watched it, and I'm glad I'm in the minority as most others seem to have enjoyed the film more than me, but there was something missing for me. All the raw ingredients were right (the acting, the documentary style, the music, the campaign) but the final product was a little tedious at times. 6 out of ten

Dear movie freaks, yesterday I went to film festival and I choose to watch this movie because of a reason: I already brainwash by Hollywood, so I want to watch other movie. This one is coming from France. As far as I know about French movies, they are sarcastic, well-presented, full of sex scenes, and shows the reality or humanity of marginalized people, and sometimes have clear ending. This movie 120 BPM has contributed to value up French movies this year and I do not so surprised if this movie was appreciated in Festival de Cannes. 120 BPM is a movie about the movement to prevent AIDS in the early 1980s in France, where at that time condoms were uncommon, despite of free-sex society. The scenes, cinematography, and main story about this movie is quite simple, but sharp in giving meaning, so that in each take, they have grammar of the scene and I could imagine they had shooting in many angles, as this movie could represent AIDS prevention in every angle of the story. Just like other French movies, this movie has sex scenes and hard language, so that if there are teenagers with you, I suggest you to explain more. The Director here also gives some real footages of the movement, so audience could have mental image of what was going on at that time, especially from the sad scenes, audience will remember the whole story as the critic for French government at that time (the President was Francois Mitterand, from French Socialist Party). Quite different from Brave Heart, this movie also wanted to say the AIDS prevention movement is for everyone, not for leftist people and I think this clear idea that had been founded the acting of all actors of this movie, deserve a high acclaim from many film festivals, including film festivals in Indonesia, my hometown. Thank you for 100% Manusia, an Indonesian NGO, who deliver this movie to our eyes.

Much of the movie is focused on the hard work of activism and while that material is certainly interesting its the emotional final act where the human cost of the AIDS epidemic is really felt. Well done.

BPM is a moving, beautifully executed film. I am an older gay man who survived this terrible time in our history. I lost most of my close friends to the virus and I remain haunted by the experience to this day. The interesting thing about this film, in spite of its tragic elements, is that it is life affirming. It is about healing through activism and the power of truth over indifference and prejudice. It is also a beautiful, erotic love story. It is truly one of the finist films about this subject ever made and should be seen by everyone.

Excellent and very thought provoking film about AIDS.

Aside from the visual aesthetics of the film the central message is clear.

Lack of funding and research by the government.

The characters were all likeable and excellent in their roles in this film. The two protagonists Sean and Nathan led this film with true grit. They made you feel for them by their loving commitment towards each other.

You won't be disappointed if you want to see what is was like during the height of the AIDS crisis in Paris in the early 90's.

In Paris in the 1990s, a group of activists get together to fight for those living with HIV and AIDS. Called Act Up, they protest and carry out aggressive action against different pharma companies and elsewhere that demonstrate and provoke lively debates. One of the group is terminally ill with AIDS.

The film moves from being a polemic on attitudes to those living and dying of the disease to focussing on a couple of people within the group. It's when the film moves in this latter direction that it becomes more interesting and at times is quite vividly shocking, never afraid from holding back on the drama or the nightmare of those suffering with the disease go through, as well as the struggles of those caring for others. The film's target audience is undeniably a homosexual one and may be alienating for those who are neither gay nor have an understanding of the disease - and it may be this audience who should watch it. Nevertheless, it is an interesting and strong piece of post-Godardian cinema.

Repetitive. Did not go anywhere. Characters are "pretty", but mundane. Sensationalism, i.e lots of sex. Writing is fair at best. Need to cut about 40 minutes out of the movie. Do we really need to go through every step of dressing a dead man. Obviously politics in "film awards".