THE OPINION OF “THE WORLD” – TO SEE
Love stories don’t always end badly, especially if they start with a certain breath of freedom. This is the bright message of To live, to die, to be rebornby Gaël Morel, which revisits the time of AIDS by following its characters over several years: the film gives itself scope to measure the effects of the massacre, and to examine the possibilities of reinvention for survivors when new treatments arrive – which allow them to live with the HIV virus and to plan for the future.
This melodrama carried by a few heady notes on the piano assumes the codes of a certain French cinema, elegant, sculpting the encounter, adjusting the rhythm, pruning the dialogues to the finest, even if it means staying a little too much in the frame. But the trio of actors (all magnificent, and very fair) makes you want to be interested in the story, which does not just replay the desire to live in the homo environment.
We discover Emma (Lou Lampros) and Sammy (Théo Christine) at a rave party in the suburbs of Paris in the early 1990s. They love each other, go out to kiss, accept the sudden arrival of a boy who hands them an ecstasy pill and makes out with each of them. On the way home, Sammy explains to his girlfriend that he has already had sex with men. That’s it, Emma accepts it. They have a child and move into an apartment that Sammy is renovating, outside of his working hours – he is a metro driver, which will give rise to a sensual scene in the tunnels, which is not essential.
“Modern Love” by Bowie
While making noise with his hammer, Sammy gets to know the downstairs neighbor, the elegant Cyril (Victor Belmondo): a photographer, he exhibits in a gallery, scours nightclubs and watches for the end of the evening with his young ephebes frozen in the foam. The screenplay leaves no doubt as to the mutual attraction between the two men. Cyril is already at the after-party, he lives with HIV, protects himself with condoms. And in a pointed wink, Gaël Morel explicitly refers to Bad Blood (1986), by Leos Carax, during an epic scene where Sammy and Cyril, full of desire, run into the street looking for a condom distributor on Modern Loveby Bowie.
It’s so big and assumed that it works: every filmmaker probably dreams of making unique images, but is it forbidden to take a brilliant idea and try to make something else out of it? We could say, quoting an eighties hit, that Gaël Morel “do, do, do what pleases him, pleases, pleases”, from the duo Chagrin d’amour, released in 1981; similarly, the title of the film as well as the scenario echo in a certain way Please, love and run fast (2018), the film by Christophe Honoré.
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