Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Rodrigo Amaro It appears to me that lately Hollywood has rediscovered a new well that is producing plenty of treasures and stories about a still present evil, that seemed largely forgotten in the movies and that rendered in the past great pictures aligned with social commentaries, denounces and good fights against prejudices. Stories about the HIV/AIDS epidemic and they're coming in the thousands: right after brilliant documentary "How To Survive a Plague", the stream continued with "Dallas Buyers Club", "Behind the Candelabra", and the upcoming adaptation of "The Normal Heart". They're all heroic, real and influential tellings and they're getting a lot of praise from everybody. Meanwhile, I took the time to look back at the time machine and search for works that were released back in the nightmarish days when the plague was a horrific death sentence and a theme barely touched on the screen. Among those, "Les Nuits Fauves" ("Savage Nights") is one that needs to receive a special attention. It's unlike any of the fore-mentioned titles, it's daring at the same time it's unpleasant, careless, controversial, and it's a different take from almost all the other films of the period. This is the anti-"Philadelphia" - I make this comparison because they were released very next to each other (the same year in most countries).What you're about to see was a real story, fictionalized at times but real. Its writer, director and main star Cyril Collard exposes a dark truth that frightens, revolts and angers, but he was being truth to himself and to the public. First, with his 1986 novel of same name and then by making this adaptation, huge risks in presenting his story about Jean, a HIV positive cinematographer wanna be director who refuses to deal with his condition, still living a hedonistic and wild life of parties, drugs and sex with both men and women. We focus on two of his lovers: the 17 year-old Laura (Rohmane Bohringer), naive and impressionable enough to fall in love with him; and the rugby player Sami (Carlos López), bisexual just like Jean, but they're more into the attraction part than dealing with a love/hate kind of thing. Torn between these two and also with casual sex encounters with strangers under a Parisian bridge, Jean ignores his disease living as if things never changed, deeply knowing that he is changing, getting affected more and more each day goes by. Everything's resumed into knowing that he's alive and kicking and there's some time to be enjoyed before death. But don't be fooled. "Savage Nights" is pain after pain, pleasure is very limited. The relation with Sami is a pure escapism since most of the time he's committed with girls and finding time to be join a racist/homophobic group, beating up people like Jean, where he can release his frustration of not living the same way he did with his criminal father back in Spain; the "love" affair with Laura is a constant headache, mostly because she doesn't handle well the fact that Jean likes guys (and she knows about Sami). It gets worse when Jean reveals that he's HIV positive and she might be as well because they had unprotected sexual relations. His excuse for not saying it before is unreasonable yet believable (and probably used by many folks out there): he thought she'd never get AIDS because their love is strong and overcomes anything, even a deadly virus. It's the greatest and most difficult scene of the film, and some will focus their anger and hate not on the character but on Collard. I appreciated the film because Collard has given a different perspective on a delicate theme at the time, had a lot of nerve in telling his story (but not necessarily a full factual retelling, there's rumors that the story ended differently for the real girl who inspired Laura) and despite the obstacles faced with his new reality, finding ways to see life with some optimism, grasping to it with the few strength he has and seeing it a little differently. Sure, he's still careless about others and himself, always putting his feelings above the others, including family and friends but now he can truly say he loves his life. Sickness feels less important, the complete opposite of what happens in similar themed films where you see characters slowly succumbing to the disease, which is always on the foreground, preventing them to do anything about it. Collard's adaptation of his own novel doesn't betray his source, though he left out great sequences - the one in Morocco is reduced to bits and pieces, but it was poetic translated in surreal scenes - but the way he conducted its transformation to the screen was very good, small chapters and fragments of a full speeding life that runs towards the inevitable end that never seems to actually feel it. It's a circle of parties, drugs, sex, wild nights, fights and risky business in a city whose corners seems to invite all of those at any given moment.But what's wrong with "Savage Nights"? It's lack of focus in the disease's progress. The character forgets about his problems and still lives his life but in terms of reality the disease becomes overlooked when it shouldn't. But forget that. What about his message to audiences? I'm positively sure that Collard was simply telling his own story without endorsing or condemning his actions - though anyone else can get easily confused with everything presented there. Let people figure out for themselves. That's what happened but it wasn't very helpful since many critics reacted badly with the movie, others praised it, and the man hasn't lived enough to expose his thoughts, dying a few days earlier of the rain of awards at the Cesar. The enigma stays on with this film testament, who was he and how to describe him and his acts? Rebellious, honest, sickening, hateful, fearless? Hero or villain? Choose yours. 8/10

nycmec This film was a succès de scandale when it was released twenty years ago, and although (in Europe and America) HIV is not the death sentence that it was at the time, the film still packs an emotional wallop. It is the portrait of a completely self-centered man who is willing to put others at risk in search of his own pleasure and self-actualization. Is he a despicable character? Yes. Does that mean the film is automatically bad? No,however...The film contains too many unfocused scenes of characters lashing out. By the fourth or fifth scene of the young female protagonist screaming on the phone, screaming in the street, screaming at the door of the apartment, it becomes overdetermined. The film tries to tackle too many subjects--sadomasochism, skinheads, internalized homophobia, bisexuality, AIDS and responsibility, teenage love... it ends up something of a hot mess. I gave it six out of ten because I feel that it is worth seeing, because it captures a certain zeitgeist of the pre-antiretroviral moment, but one does feel a bit on watching it today that it has not aged all that well.

clotblaster The movie is a classical tragedy. The star, writer, director Cyril Collard has Aids and knows he is dying when making the film. He storms and rages against the forces of negativity and affirms life in ways that seem obscene to many, but really focus on the basics of life, love and the willingness to actually live your life, even knowing that you are about to die. To quote Dylan Thomas, "He rages against the dying of the night." This is not a gloomy film, except for the immense talent that Collard has in a number of areas, not the least writing and directing. The tragedy is that his libertine life of reckless homosexuality killed him (and many others). Unlike Philadelphia, an artifice of politically correct, maudlin nonsense, this film has Aids sometimes right in your face and sometimes in the background, but it is always there. Hedonism killed many and still does in the Aids epidemic and in the U.S.A., this film would attract few positive reviews and almost no distribution because Collard refuses to play the victim game. Over 80% of Aids deaths have been caused by homosexual behavior. In the film Collard can't control his impulses and because of Aids he wants to squeeze as much out of life as he can. The love story with Laura, beautifully played by Romane Bohringer, is tragic in and of itself, but their love is fatally compromised by his disease. Collard desperately wanted to live his life with Aids and not have Aids run his life. Unfortunately, that is impossible, although he gives it a mighty effort to free himself from thoughts of death, which never really leave him. He continues to have grimy homosexual encounters, supposedly not involving dangerous sex (at least in the film); my surmise is that in real life he lived dangerously right up to the end. When he has sex with Laura the first time, he doesn't use a condom and doesn't tell her he has Aids--a classic kind of denial, an attempt to conquer the disease through action , which is selfish. Many homosexuals will see this film, which other scenes do not really show them in a positive light, as a film to suppress. Reckless behavior has volcanoed in the last few years, but gets no publicity because of the left-wing press who refuses to see Aids victims as anything but victims, who didn't really cause their disease. Collard's film slaps the faces of hypocrisy and lying about Aids again and again in this film. It is a testimony to his will to live and to make a film that doesn't cover up the reality of how Aids is spread and how little impulse control many gays have. Drugs will not stop Aids deaths, safe sex and sometimes no sex will. Also, and very important, Collard wants to show that the heterosexual relationship with a loving woman is the way to live your life, but for him his refusal to control his impulses and perhaps his genetic inability to control them (though that is difficult to infer), keeps him from what would have saved him. Hedonism is not spat on in this movie, but its terrible results in many cases are exemplified in the tragic death of such a talented and lovely man.

gio.usa A hymn to life. A hymn to love. A hymn to poetry. A hymn to beauty. Cyril Collard, in his last lifetime, gave us the real sense of pathos with all facets. An "opera omnia" never sloppy, neither sentimental abused, just real life can be poetic if lived with the gradients of the inner feeling.