Robin Campillo’s ACTUP Docudrama celebrates Queer resistance with joyous sound and fury
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to cinapse.twocents@gmail.com.
The Pick:
Cinapse closes Pride Month with a powerful reminder of the importance of resistance at every level of life. Winner of the Cannes Grand Prix and Best Film at France’s César Awards, BPM (120 Battements Par Minute) is a stirring, joyful docudrama about Paris’s ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Confronting the Mitterrand government’s indifference and a heteronormative society, ACT UP channels righteous anger into dramatic, nonviolent protests to disrupt public complacency toward the AIDS crisis. Decades after the epidemic’s peak, LGBTQ+ communities still face discrimination and stigma—making BPM’s portrait of resistance, both through protest and the defiant joy of living in the face of death, as urgent and resonant as ever.
The Team
Ed Travis
Towards the end of BPM, a film set in and around the AIDS epidemic era (early 1990s) in France, a truly sacred scene unfolds.
Through most of the film we follow activist group ACT UP as they apply pressure on big pharma and the French government to speed AIDS research. Most of them are Positive themselves, so their activism isn’t performative…it’s life or death. The film takes us inside planning meetings, getting deep into the weeds on how they coordinate their disruptive demonstrations, how they determine the right levels of pressure to apply to get real results, and when they’ve gone too far in ways that might negatively impact the movement. It’s passionate and insightful, bold and yes, disruptive. It’s through these demonstrations and meetings that we get to know Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who is HIV positive, and Nathan (Arnaud Valois), who is negative.
As these men meet, fall in love, and navigate the nuances of sex and protection in a terrifying era, the audience is exposed to very intimate relational dynamics. We fall in love with Sean and Nathan even as watch Sean’s health deteriorate. Ultimately Nathan aids Sean in his death, and we’re invited into the aforementioned sacred space of Sean’s immediate death, the care taken around his body, and the gathering of friends and community who join Sean’s mother, and Nathan, to be together, to remember, to mourn, and to encourage. The scene goes on for quite a while, and when each new friend arrived at the apartment in solidarity with Sean, to pay respects, to lift up his mother, and to comfort Nathan, more and more tears escaped my eyes.
My own mother passed away on March 31st of this year, and I was present with her when she passed. My whole family was. We stayed with her, we mourned, we read scriptures, we talked to her, we talked to one another. It was sad, yes… but more than anything, it was sacred. Hallowed. An unforgettable moment of seismic meaning that our beloved mother, my Dad’s wife of over 62 years, had passed forever from this plane to the next. The gathering of my family and community around me in and around the death of my mother was profoundly meaningful, and I’m more deeply attuned to the sacred nature of death, and the profundity of coming together, mourning in community, and solidarity.
All of this is to say that BPM is potent empathy cinema that I was uniquely positioned to receive powerfully. It lets viewers in to see the challenges, fears, and desperations of the gay community at a time when they were facing existential threat. It allows us to fall in love with our brave, vulnerable, and profoundly human characters, and deeply feel their loss. It allows us to gather around Sean’s body, along with his community, his family, and mourn for him, not to mention the many thousands that we tragically lost (and are still losing) to this illness.
Julian Singleton
BPM opens with an emotionally charged ACT UP Paris debate over a protest-gone-awry—messy, impassioned, full of clashing ideologies on how best to be heard. Robin Campillo’s LGBTQ+ masterpiece quickly reveals itself as more than a political drama: whether its audience is Queer or not, it’s a visceral meditation on how to live fully when life itself is under siege bon both societal and cellular levels.
Drawing from his and co-writer Philippe Mangeot’s own experience in the HIV/AIDS resistance of the 1980s, Campillo follows a vibrant ensemble of gay, lesbian, and trans activists channeling grief into action. Nathan (Arnaud Valois), a HIV-negative man haunted by loss, finds purpose in ACT UP’s confrontational, nonviolent protests against government inaction. There, he meets Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), an outspoken, HIV-positive firebrand who embraces both his rage and his zest for life.
Unlike many sanitized, rainbow-driven portrayals of Queer liberation, BPM embraces the chaos of collective action: electric, funny, tense, and rarely unanimous. It’s as hard for everyone to get on the same page even when they’re on the same side, to say nothing about the unified oppression they face. The group’s unspoken yet fiercely visible diversity—trans, immigrant, hearing-impaired, children infected through transfusions—underscores the universality of AIDS and the necessity of solidarity: as one character intones, “you can’t split responsibility.” Campillo also contrasts societal reactions to ACT UP: from homophobic dismissal, to bureaucratic apathy, to quiet moments of allyship—reminding us how vital loud, visible activism is for those who don’t yet have the resources or will to speak up for themselves.
The most searing reason why I love BPM so much is its refusal to let tragedy eclipse joy. Amid the protests and planning, there are club nights and cheer lines, watering balcony gardens or lovers sneaking AZT doses amidst midnight embraces. Even through the death of one of their own, the ACTUP group channels that pain into action, chanting in his name through their tears. The film celebrates intimacy and humor, depicting a community that refuses to let AIDS define how they live or love. As one says, “we’re either dead or alive:” existence is resistance.
As the story narrows to Nathan and Sean’s romance, their relationship becomes a microcosm of the struggle: tender, defiant, shadowed by mortality yet never surrendering to it. Their love unfolds in caretaking and quiet milestones, from the intimacy of sharing their infection stories, to a handjob in a hospital to relieve tension, to the milestone act of moving in as a couple tied to Nathan assuming a hospice caretaker for Sean. It’s a domesticity tied to death, yet refuses to be defined by it, living fully even when time feels short.
The climax of BPM is framed as Nathan’s ultimate act for Sean–and the following Wake sequence is the most devastating and triumphant sequence of Campillo’s film. Sadness and joy arrives in waves as ACTUP members show up to remember Sean with Nathan and Sean’s mother, who in the loss of her son takes over being a mother for everyone else. There’s quiet, powerful moments of process–from making coffee to re-dressing Sean’s body. The most heartwrenching moment is when Hélène shares a beat with Sean’s mother–a peaceful one overshadowed with the memento mori that she’ll likely go through the same experience with Marco someday. But even here there’s humor and joy–in honoring Sean’s wish to have his ashes thrown at a pharmaceutical gala, Sean’s mother jokingly questions the ratio of remains she’ll get to keep for herself (50/50? 80/20?).
The last scene, fulfilling Sean’s last request, is a remarkable collapsing of death and life, resistance and fate. Protest and ashes and the club and the beat. As Campillo notes about the film’s full title, 120 Beats Per Minute refers to the rhythm of a human heartbeat as it does to most club dance tracks. It’s the pulse of life and protest intertwined, a sweaty, joyous rage against the dying of the light.
Justin Harlan
Is there a better way to wrap up our PRIDE/RIOT month than this? I can’t imagine one right now. And, even though this isn’t necessarily the type of movie I generally choose to watch myself, I kinda loved it. I feel like I need a second viewing to really take it in and offer anything much of value to the conversation here, but I want to offer a short personal anecdote instead…
I went to a small Christian university outside Philadelphia for college. I have mixed feelings about the church, the school, and my experience, but one very positive impact it had on me as a Freshman was when I volunteered as a program in Philadelphia called “We the People Living with AIDS”. Every Freshman was required a certain number of hours in “service learning” and I did mine at this soup kitchen/food pantry program. Early on in my visits there, I met a Black gay man who shared his story with me. He was shunned by his family, kicked out of his church, and cut off most of his friends when he came out. He fell deep into alcohol and – eventually – crack cocaine. This led to losing his job and living on the streets. He contracted HIV when prostituting to make ends meet. What struck me, besides the lack of compassion from the Christians in his story, was how grateful he was for every day he woke up alive again. His positivity was infectious, but so was his desire to help others. Despite having so little to give materially, he was so willing to give of his time, his experience, and his honest desire to help others. He really left an impression when he spoke of how society and politics needed to evolve – and, to him, changing those things started with fixing our hearts.
I found out he passed away a few years later, I was pretty struck by it… and, I definitely think it was one of the major things that pushed me away from the bullshit “love the sinner, hate the sin” mindset of the Evangelical church settings I grew up in. This film, while obviously far different in tone from this story, reminded me of the first HIV positive gay man I got to know personally. And, I’m thankful for meeting him and for films like this.
Two Cents Celebrates the month of July with ALBERT BROOKS 101
Join us this July while the team fills some blindspots and discovers exactly why Albert Brooks is so widely respected among his peers and fans.
7/7: Lost In America (Available on VOD)
7/14: Defending Your Life (Available on VOD)
7/21: Broadcast News (Available on Starz and VOD)
7/28: Drive (Available on VOD)
