i don’t want to hear about aids
by Douglas Messerli
Roberto Pérez Toledo (screenwriter
and director) La peli que vamos a ver (The Movie We Are Going to See) / 2017
[5 minutes]
In the final stages of wonderful
lovemaking, one young man (Fran Antón) suggests to his bedmate
(Javier Santiago) that, having had
great sex, they might now do something “useful” such as seeing a movie.
The second wonders if their sexual after-play isn’t useful. But the
first not only would like to go to the cinema but has a particular movie in
mind, French director Robin Campillo’s 120 battements par minute (in
English BPM [Beats Per Minute]), a film about AIDS and the ACT UP
group in the 1990s. The film buff’s friend is not really interested in the
cinema, and certainly not up to seeing a film about AIDS. He’s more interested
in superheroes like the Marvel figures.
His friend wonders about his intellect, since the two still getting to
know one another, and challenges him also about how he might feel if he
suddenly were to tell him that he’s HIV-positive.
Suddenly the second man is made quite obviously uncomfortable, querying
the friend to make sure it’s just a bluff. But the friend proceeds in the
enquiry, suggesting that his answer truly matters.
The friend attempts to steer around the subject, obviously uncomfortable
with discussing any aspect about AIDS, and possibly anything to do with death
in general. But the question remains open; would he suddenly get up and leave
if his friend truly was infected?
Once more, his lover tries to find a way
out of answering the dilemma by saying it certainly would be something that he
wouldn’t wish for his friend, and that he would certainly have to think about
it. But we can also see that he is still attempting to discern whether or not his
friend is speaking hypothetically or attempting a roundabout confession.
But even that waffling disturbs this
short film’s moviegoer. What is his new lover afraid of. Might he be there if
he did get sick? What are his values? Is he truly so limited in his tastes that
he cannot even see a serious film?
When his friend pleads with him to tell
him whether or not the scenario he has tossed out is real, his friend admits
that he not infected, and the other immediately agrees to join him at the
movie.
But in this transaction, we have
learned a great deal about both men, and are certainly doubtful after this very
brief conversation that the two can become life-time partners—that is, unless
the lesson the second has just been taught about facing up to reality and the
passion of the movie he is about to see might encourage him to think more
deeply about life.
Obviously, Spanish director Roberto
Pérez Toledo had been highly moved by the film, which came out in the same year
in which this film was made. And in some respects, one might think of this
short as almost being a plug for Campillo’s excellent work. But these are the
kinds of questions, nonetheless, that need to be asked and dealt with nowadays
with any new gay relationship. Certainly, I have no time with of those many
young gay men who don’t want to hear another word or see another film about
AIDS, statements that have appeared in a couple of recent movies (notably in
Jordan Firstman’s Call Your Father from 2016 and Etyan Fox’s Sublet from
2021). It is a little bit like saying
don’t tell me ever talk to me again about the Holocaust. There are just some
horrific events that need to be always with us in our collective consciousness,
particularly when the possibilities of such horrible and illogical death and
hate still remain in the human brain.
Los Angeles, November 15, 2022
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(November 2022).
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