BPM (Beats per Minute) (2017)

Sadly Over-hyped

Please don't spend money on this.

Good movie but grossly overrated

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Lost me when they brought their campaign to young straight people, some of the people at the lowest risk for HIV.

"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]

An intelligent yet visceral film about the gay community in '80s Paris, which starts brilliantly – focusing on the protests and meetings of Act Up, a group of guerrilla AIDS activists – before turning into a film about a man dying of the illness.No matter how compassionately, credibly and intimately it does that, segueing from a film about ideas to one about the individual, contrasting the character's dynamism and beauty with his pain- ravaged impotence, and showing the body – not the city – as the battleground, it's ground we've covered countless times before, and (at the risk of sounding awful) it made the movie increasingly tedious.At its best, this confrontational, unsentimental but humanistic film has unexpected echoes of Melville's Army in the Shadows, which looked at action, division and necessity within the French Resistance, and I understand why it included so many sequences of illness and sex, but those elements don't seem as interesting as the story it started to tell. When it returns to it in those final moments, loaded with the suffering and sadness of what's gone before, the results are admittedly astounding.Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is absolutely terrific as Sean, a founding member, Mesut Őzil-alike and all-round complex human being, first introduced to us justifying the fact that he and his mates have handcuffed a government official to a post during his team's PowerPoint presentation.

Disappointing (though not surprising) that this propaganda film won the Grand Prix at Cannes - as well as the 'Queer Palme' (the fact that such an award exists... no comment...). I went in hoping for the best, hoping for something better than a message film. The dynamics of the militant group Act Up were initially, marginally engaging, but halfway through the film changes gears, focusing on one activist who ends up dying. The emotional payoff is, alas, not even close to worth the two and a half hour running time - I didn't care enough about the character who ended up dying, and the activist thing didn't really go anywhere. None of the characters were very appealing. The powers that be (pharmaceutical executives and high school teachers) were painted as hard-hearted cold fish villains. Suffice to say - about an hour and a half in I'm literally hoping the main character will die already so the film will end... I contemplated leaving early.The critic from Le Monde baffling claimed that the film whitewashes sexual minorities; on the contrary, be warned: there is graphic gay sex in the film, which I really could have done without.