Fight the power
Robin Campillo’s pulsating personal account of an Aids activist group in ’90s Paris…
In 1982 I was 20, and it was the beginning of the [Aids] epidemic,” says French writer/director Robin Campillo. “Newspapers were saying that a lot of gay men were going to die. I went through the ’80s terrified. Then I joined [Aids awareness campaign group] ACT UP in ’92. That changed my life. The group was so funny. There was a kind of jubilation. The first meeting I went to, I even felt, ‘Where is the disease?’ For 10 years we’d all been terrified on our own. Now we reinvented ourselves as a group – writing texts, making posters, planning actions.”
And so it is that Campillo’s new drama 120 BPM is a tale both personal and political, elegiac and euphoric. Set in Paris in the early ’90s, it tracks ACT UP’s lively meetings and direct actions – part theatre, part terrorism – designed to shock the middle-aged suits of the political and pharmaceutical establishments into conducting urgent, large-scale research. If that sounds serious, it is, but by confronting death comes an appreciation of life: this is a movie bursting with love and friendship, dance music and great sex; 120 (heart) beats per minute, indeed.
“It’s honest!” grins Campillo, who talks at 120 words per minute. “I survived this epidemic. It was hard and unfair because the disease was killing young people, but we could react because we were young, and full of life. We wanted to survive not just to have a job but to party and have sex and take drugs!”
You’d better believe it
– even the meetings in 120
BPM are high-energy affairs. Campillo, after all, was the writer of 2008 Palme d’Or winner The Class, in which a teacher negotiates a year in a tough Parisian neighbourhood. The filmmaker’s secret to writing such organic, vital dialogue? Altering his lines to fit the actors, and shooting entire scenes in one take to allow momentum to flow. It makes for a glorious ensemble piece, though at its heart is the burgeoning romance between wiry, smart-mouthed Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) and the quiet Nathan (Arnaud Valois).
“When I was in this group I was not one of the big mouths – it took me two or three years to talk,” says Campillo, who insists that the film is not strictly autobiographical but some characters and actions are. “In the ’80s, I wanted to be a director but thought the cinema was useless, as all the directors I loved – guys from the New Wave – seemed so far away [from my own concerns]. And then I realised that I wanted to talk about my own experiences.” They make for vivid and inspirational viewing. As Campillo sums up, “We were so good at being alive!”
ETA | 6 APRIL / 120 BPM OPENS IN THE SPRING.