NEARLY A YEAR SINCE IT DAZZLED AUDIENCES AT CANNES, FRENCH AIDS DRAMA 120 BEATS PER MINUTE IS FINALLY GETTING A UK RELEASE. ADAM DUXBURY TALKS TO THE FILM’S DIRECTOR AND TWO OF THE LEADING ACTORS TO LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF THE RADICAL ORGANISATION THAT INSPIRED THE FILM

UNSILENT KNIGHT: Sean’s determined to make a noise about the Aids crisis

CÉLINE NIESZAWER

120 BPM

ACTING UP: the stars of the hard-hitting Aids drama, Arnaud Valois, left, and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart

SAD MEMORIES: Robin Campillo

STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHY: MARKUS BIDAUX

The Aids epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s has been the driving force behind plenty of wonderful but tragic films, from Philadelphia and An Early Frost to Dallas Buyers Club and The Normal Heart. Now, Moroccan-born director Robin Campillo’s brilliant 120 Battements Par Minute adds a fresh sense of urgency and elegy to a set of films covering one of the darkest chapters of LGBT+ history.

The film tells the story of the French wing of ferocious advocacy group ACT UP, as members fight for their lives against the apathy of their government and the greed and bureaucracy of pharmaceutical companies.

When I travel to Paris to meet the film’s two lead actors, Arnaud Valois, who plays Nathan, and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, who plays Sean, and later talk to director and screenwriter Robin over the phone, one word that we keep coming back to is “authenticity”.

The drama weaves a fictional story but is based so heavily on true events and drenched in such unflinching accuracy that it often feels as if you’re watching a documentary.

From the way the huge ensemble cast click their fingers at their regular meetings (applause is too noisy and interrupts proceedings), down to the exact recipe for fake blood, mixed by the bathful and splashed around the offices of callous corporations, all this authenticity is possible thanks to the reallife experiences of Robin himself. “I didn’t go through documents to do this film, I went through my memories,” he tells me.

DISEASE AND DEVASTATION

Robin was a 20-year-old film student in 1982 when reports of the Aids crisis in New York began to hit the French newspapers. “When I read the first articles talking about a gay cancer I was paralysed with fear. They were saying that most gay men would die,” he recalls.

“I wanted to do cinema, but I was also a young gay man who wanted to have fun, to have a lot of sex. I think my world collapsed in a way.” He completed his degree at a prestigious French film school but, overwhelmed by the devastation the disease was causing all around him, Robin lost his taste for cinema and took up a job as a video editor for the news desk of French state TV channel France 3, which eventually brought him into contact with members of ACT UP.

“I would see people from the organisation in Paris and it seemed to me that they were prouder and stronger than me at the time. They had a kind of power that was amazing,” he says.

But he only attended his first ACT UP meeting by chance. “I had a date with a guy close to where it was being held but he didn’t show, so I decided to go to the meeting instead,” he tells me, laughing.

Walking into the room was an electrifying, yet intimidating, experience. In 120 BPM, Robin recreates that feeling perfectly by throwing shy newcomer

Nathan into a similarly challenging situation. He admits that the character is the most autobiographical in the film, saying, “When he talks about his past it’s exactly my life but otherwise it’s a mix of fiction and little parts of me in every character.”

Nathan is HIV negative and becomes intrigued by the wiry, lippy Sean — one of the more radical members of the group — when they strike up a conversation at a school protest. Sean is brilliantly played by Nahuel, in a performance that saw him win the Best Newcomer prize at France’s top awards ceremony, the Césars. Shockingly, the film was overlooked at this year’s Oscars, but it picked up five more awards at the Césars, including Best Film.