Talking 'BPM': ACTing UP in 2017

One of the most audacious, relentless and powerful films of 2017 is France's Foreign Language Film Oscar entry: Robin Campillo's "BPM (Beats Per Minute)," which details AIDS activism via ACT UP Paris in startling docu-detail.

The first half of Campillo's film depicts the activist group's planning and carrying out daring acts against the ineffectual government officials and profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies, before moving to a touching love story between two very different protagonists, Nathan and Sean (fiercely played by Arnaud Valois and Nahuel P�rez Biscayart). Campillo, as in his earlier gem "Eastern Boys," does not shy away from graphic sex scenes between men. Quite the contrary, he goes there.

An homage to a valiant group of people who had very little to lose but refused to give up their lives without a fight, "BPM" is both a reminder to young LGBTQs that just a few short years ago things were dire.

EDGE sat down with director Campillo and actors Valois and Biscayart right after the film was wildly well received at the 55th New York Film Festival. Here is a abridged version of that chat.

EDGE: How has the Festival been?

Robin Campillo: It's been great. We had two screenings and I met few former militant (members) of ACT UP New York and that was very nice... ACT UP Paris is inspired by ACT UP New York. The audience reception was very warm. We had two standing ovations.

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: It was very emotional.

EDGE: Standing ovations in New York are rare.

Robin Campillo: We've been told that.

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: We're spoiled because we've been showing the film and standing ovations are kind of normal, so I thought it was normal here, too.

Robin Campillo: We became very arrogant after Cannes.

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: Not arrogant, but you just get used to the power of the film.

EDGE: Do you know if Larry Kramer has seen it?

Robin Campillo: I don't know.

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: That's the main question.

Robin Campillo: The big question mark in our minds.

EDGE: Can you speak about your relationship with ACT UP as a member and the genesis of the project?

Robin Campillo: I (joined) ACT UP in '92. It's very strange. ACT UP solved a lot of things for me because the '80s were a nightmare. I was so afraid of this epidemic. I was paralyzed as a young gay guy and as a film director. I thought cinema was useless. And especially the cinema I loved because I was a big fan of the French New Wave and directors like Bresson. And they were not connected to each other. For instance, all the New Wave was about healthy people. You don't talk about diseases in the films of Godard. There's only one film Agnes Vargas "Cl�o from 5 to 7," which was very close to what I was living in the '80s, about this woman who is waiting to know if she has cancer...

So being desynchronized with my sexual life, my sentimental life and the cinema, I went to ACT UP and I reinvented myself. And I was kind of recording everything. I don't know if I was thinking about doing a film about ACT UP but, weirdly, I have a very precise memory of what was going on there.

So when making the film I knew I wanted the spectator to be trapped, to be like me when I came to this group for the first time and fell in love with the group... The amphitheater would be the brain of the film. I wanted a place without windows, a blank place with only people talking, sharing views.

EDGE: Let me ask the two actors. How much did you know about ACT UP and how much research did you do?

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: I didn't know anything about it. I was born and grew up in Argentina. The only think [I recall] is maybe a pink triangle somewhere. I got to know ACT UP through the script. Then we read books. We had access to the television archives in France so that we could see everything that ACT UP did at the time. And, also, documentaries of activists. And we were surrounded by experienced people.

Arnaud Valois: I was born in France, so I have a few memories of the pink condom that they put on the Plaza Obelisk, all the spectacle. But that's it. Not the history of the group.

EDGE: How important was it for you to show a new generation what the past generation had to do in order to survive?

Robin Campillo: I really didn't think about this, to be honest. I discovered it because I confronted the new generation (refers to Arnaud and Nahuel) during the filming so that was very interesting. I wasn't thinking so much of the audience as doing the right thing. So, consciously I didn't talk to the young generation but I think unconsciously, yes.

Doing the film I knew I'd be talking to young actors, mostly gays, and I realized that they didn't know about the way we lived. I realized there was some importance in talking about the genealogy of this epidemic.

I wrote the script from my memories. I didn't go through too many documents. And memories are not reality. They're fantasies. I tried to put them in perspective. I really wanted the young generation to be connected emotionally and in a sensorial way.

EDGE: Arnaud and Nahuel, when you read the script, did it have a political resonance with you?

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: When I read scripts I don't have a political or intellectual way of reading them. It's more of an emotional approach. The script was very well written, I cried. I could feel there was something that had been lived and that was very well described in the script.

Arnaud Valois: I felt the force, the intensity of this group, afterwards, watching it. Definitely. But reading it, at the beginning, no.

Robin Campillo: Of course the film talks a lot about politics but I didn't do it as a political film. I did it as a fiction where people are talking about politics. I did it honestly even though I knew that in the end it would be a political film.

I was not thinking of lecturing young people today. I was thinking of being so honest with myself and what happened to me that, of course, it would make sense for the new generation. If you touch the truth, it will touch people now.

EDGE: You did it in a fearlessly queer way, as opposed to another film in the Festival that shied away from nudity and overly sexual situations. Is that something you didn't give much thought to and was there any pressure on you to tame it?

Robin Campillo: No, there was not exactly pressure on me. France is a good place. Really. The film is a little bit prude compared to, say, 'Blue is the Warmest Color' or 'Stranger By the Lake.' So it was like erotic soft porn. That was okay. I love to film sex scenes.

(Arnaud and Nahuel crack up)

Arnaud Valois: I love when you say that!

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: This is the first time he's saying that.

Arnaud Valois: No!

Robin Campillo: No!

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: I'm just kidding.

Robin Campillo: I think it's very important. I don't do these kinds of sex scenes to shock or to be provocative. That's why I have a lot of pleasure doing them. When I think of my first boyfriend who died in 1990, when Nathan is talking about his past it's really my past. And so when I think about him I miss him for a lot of [reasons], but I miss his body. I miss the fact that we had sex together. I miss the fact that we had sex before the epidemic. So there's a kind of nostalgia about that. So I try to feel that again when I do these scenes. The kind of thing where when you have sex with someone and it feels like love. It feels like real romance. That's very important to me. And the other thing is you don't make a film about HIV...

Robin, Arnaud & Nahuel: Without sex...

Robin Campillo: Because that's the whole point. And I don't like films where you get to the sex scene and it's a big performance and people are already naked and they show things you would never do. If you have dull sex, that's great. And people should not feel guilty when they just have average sex. So I like to show where they have sex and one has an orgasm and the other one doesn't. They have to get naked first. And they get so excited they don't know what to do so they talk a little bit, and after they go back to sex. And after they summon their former lovers who appear as ghosts. Like the oral sex scene is like a s�ance. And that's connected to my first boyfriend, because he's dead but I like the idea that we are connected to everyone we made love with. I love the idea of doing this.

EDGE: Let's discuss the love story at the heart of the film and how you approached that as actors?

Nahuel P�rez Biscayart: Well, I'm sure that it was different for him than for me. At the beginning of the film my character is quite closed to love because he feels like he's going to die soon, so he's not imagining any possible relationship with anybody. And it's because the sickness strikes at one point in the film when there's no way back. That weakness obliges him in a certain way to open up and just accept whatever... love, care, company. You can call it what you want. Because when we are alone and we're dying, we really want to have somebody next to us. So it's like a very strange love story in the sense that it takes a very weird shape, a very weird form. Maybe he's making amends for his past.

Arnaud Valois: For me, quite naturally. I didn't think about falling in love. I was just there and in the moment and watching things. My character, at the beginning is quite empty and then grows after a while, thanks to the group and thanks to the love story.

EDGE: Robin, can you speak to how you work with the actors?

Robin Campillo: I realized from my previous film, 'Eastern Boys' compared to my very first film, now the main interest for me in cinema is to work with actors. That seems obvious, but it's not. Maybe I'm arrogant, but I think that the framing, the lights, the editing is very easy for me. I have a very clear vision of what I want to exactly do. But all that is not important if the characters are not there. So the main thing is to work with the actors. I'm very obsessed by that.

I try to honestly look at my actors. How they work. I look at them very intensely to know what I will find in them. I want a lot of contrast between them. And you can see it's not the same method for each of them. You have different persons in front of you. You have to talk to some persons; you have to stay silent in front of others.

"BPM (Beats Per Minute)" is currently playing in New York and Los Angeles. For a list of upcoming bookings,