“BPM” (Beats Per Minute) has a very moving love story surrounded with a dramatic and (don’t let this word scare you!) educational film about the very effective organization ACT UP, that was founded by Larry Kramer in New York in 1987. Two years later the French version of the ACT UP organization opened in 1989.

The main purpose of ACT UP was to take direct action to end the AIDS crisis and demonstrating for greater, faster access to experimental drugs.

The film opens with a demonstration at a drug company and leads into a local ACT UP meeting where the rules are explained to four newcomers such as snapping fingers instead of clapping or saving all debating for the meeting room, not in the hall where they go to have a cigarette. The meetings are attended by males, females, some being HIV+ and others negative, straights, gays, drug users, who have full blown AIDS.

The horror of what the government didn’t do for many years and the horror of watching vibrant people being decimated by a disease that is still killing people over 35 years later is shown with fingers being pointed at all, even with their infighting at meetings.

Intermingled with facts, figures, marches, condom and needle distributions, walls splattered with fake blood, a mother’s horror finding that she has been injecting her son, a hemophiliac, with infected bold provided by a hospital is a love story.

At that first meeting, where we observe the ACT UP group, one of the newcomers, Nathan, played by Arnaud Valois, HIV- negative, zeros in on Sean (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) a firebrand, militant leader who has AIDS.  (An aside: as Nathan tells Sean about his first love the lover’s name is Arnaud!) We follow them as they at first fall in love and then dealing with Sean’s illness.

Most of the actors are new faces, such as Biscayart and Valois, which adds a little confusion at the beginning and it may take some time to realize that Marco, the hemophiliac, played by Theophile Ray, is the son of Helene, Catherine Vinatier. We meet Jeremie, Ariel Borenstein, ACT UP president Thibault, Antoine Reinartz, and other ACT UP members, plus a drug company CEO Samuel Churin, Sean’s mother Saadia Ben Taieb among a strong supporting cast.

The film, directed by Robin Campillo, who also co-wrote it with Philippe Mangeot, based up the former’s experiences as an ACT UP participant, is the French Oscar contender for the 2018 Best Foreign Language  film.

“BPM” is one the best films ever made about AIDS but has a few minor faults and one major fault. The latter is the 2 hours and 44 minutes running time along with faulty editing and slow pace.

Being a French film the two sex scenes are vivid while the last twenty minutes are very moving. The problem is that there are too many unnecessary scenes such as 3 disco scenes when one would have sufficed, one too many marches, a beach scene that adds nothing to the love story and so on, taking away from getting to know some of the characters better.

“BMP” is a must see movie even though it may be hard to watch at times and the love story is completely believable!

 Movie trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVAw7JfTqBU