N'oublie pas que tu vas mourir

Have you ever catch a movie with a fine premise going to waste each scene goes by and ultimately turning into a disaster? Well, if not here's a fine example of such and coming from the great French cinema. The upsetting "Don't Forget You're Going to Die" is an exact proof of that, and it lingers in your head with a dreadful taste for days. To make it worse, be aware that Cannes Film Festival even gave a small prize to it (what they were thinking?). Awards get wrong sometimes.

In this crazed fragmented story the young art student Benoit (Xavier Beauvois, also writer and director of this thing) is having fears of having to join the Army when he's called to duty. His life plans consists of graduting in Arts. Before and during the Army service, he keeps thinking of ways to excusing himself from there, going to a doctor's to get psycho-analyzed as a depressed man who can get discharged from work; then while he's there he fills the charts in all the the reasoning why he could not serve (pretending he's gay, or have a mental illness, etc.) than later he attempts suicide and that kind of works. While in recovery he discovers he has AIDS and that news makes him blow out of proportitions leading a life of heavy drug use and wild parties with a new mate. Crazy, huh?

But hey, at least he got out of the Army so he's at peace and can go back to the Arts, right? Not fully though.

For a major portion of the film Benoit's life is filled wtih drugs, sex (which includes an unsimulated sex scene) and misery where he wanders all lost through Paris. By that time, we don't care about the hedonistic manners of Benoit neither his art class where he picks up a tragic paintings and makes it a comparative with his personal life as an AIDS victim, showing how tragical the painting is. We don't care because we know nothing about him before the Army thing, he's erratic for most of the time and we only get fragments of his life that doesn't explain anything. And how in the world did he got infected? No explanation given but one that was needed. It's hard to feel compassion or empathy for the guy. He comes from nothing, whines a lot and goes from nowhere to nowhere (don't even get me started with the final three minutes which is a cycle back to where he started and we must accept that dull ending as being realistic or likely to happen).

But there's a catch: the third act where he travels to Italy and meets a woman (Chiara Mastroianni) who could be the love of his life. They appreciate the architecture and arts of the place, it's all colorful and beautiful, and it feels a complete different film from the previous hour we had. It was actually going good but tragedy strikes and the couple can't get fully together. Benoit realizes life is different now that he's sick, sexual relations must be protected but the girl is a step further for going wild and she doesn't understand why the condom use is necessary (since he doesn't open up about his HIV status). Will they ever succeed in being together? What life holds out for them? Not gonna tell, even though I'm not making you to watch it, unless if you're into disappointment already knowing how's gonna be.

I perceived this film as being a hurting and damning version of "Les Nuits Fauves" ("Savage Nights") by Cyril Collard which is a controversial but thousand times better than this film.

That one was a dark, brutal and realistic film about a lost man who tries to live his life and have some romance in his life despite his trouble relationship with a male lover and a possible girlfriend/love of his life after knowing he has AIDS. That movie was touching, sad and quite real since it was Collard's own experiences that came to life.

The character he played was despicable, quite erratic but multi-dimensional, we could understand his pain and why he acted in strange ways. Here, Benoit is too crazed for his own good and the fragments of a bizarre life didn't add up to anything. The main character hides himself from everyone, he avoids pain but surrounds himself with misery in tragic comic bits where the disease becomes a background thing with almost no importance. Has to be one of the weakest films dealing with HIV/AIDS, with a character who wants to live but doesn't know how to. He's a coward all the way up until the final minutes I mentioned before. Something happens there and we don't understand why, but we know it doesn't make any sense.

Had the movie being more about the romantic moments in Italy and less with the down and out bits of him in France, with Benoit having a complicated relationship with the girl, we'd have a beautiful film about a man fighting his inner demons to live the life he wants, with restrcitions and care but a life worth living with the one he loves.

The story we got had nothing valuable to show, not a single decent performance and a screenplay that gave too many shots in the dark hoping to hit something deep. Well, it didn't. 4/10.

The film tells the journey of a young french man named Benoit after he learned that he had contracted the AIDS virus. Xavier Beauvois directs and plays the lead character. An interesting film in which Benoit embarks to an odyssey into the hell of sex and drugs in a desperate move to forget about his condition. The ending is truly surprising. Some scenes are a bit overlong (the drug taking). I was tempted to call this film "the french Trainspotting" but there is no humor to find in this one... score: 8/10.

Once in a while (and more often in summer, I'm afraid) a film arrives on TV that is so bad, so off-putting that I must fly to my keyboard to denounce it. Beauvois's is such a picture. The comment likening it to a French Trainspotting is apt, but it's more like Les Nuits fauves, because of the HIV-Positive status of the lead character. Then there is the homage to Rebel Without A Cause, and indeed all movies that have angry, self-destructive and UNINTERESTING heroes.

This man's short life is like a train-wreck. Failed art student, hopeless army volunteer, drug dabbler (why? we never see much reason for this behavior), finally for this bisexual there is an attempt at love with a stable woman whom he abandons at the first sign that it might work.

Chiara Mastroianni is photographed lovingly; her golden skin tone like a Renoir nude. She opens out the story, makes it sensual, vital instead of claustrophobically focussed on Beauvois's miserable urges. Roschdy Zem's talent goes unused, he's just there to demonstrate the use of certain drugs. Pity.

this movie started off very slow, and unfortunately ended slower. due to the lack of maturity of the screenwriter, the director, and the star (all the same person - xavier beauvois) its hard to believe this film was released. fortunately, the powers-that-be in the European film industry chose not to release his next film. i saw this film under the auspices of the prix jean virgo film series at nyc's MoMA, & now question the quality of the future films selected to be exhibited.

this story unfolds in a very odd and uninformed way so that the audience is unfamiliar with preceding events, & therefore, has very little sympathy with the main character. without going into any detail of the movie, the ending is so undeveloped, again one wonders how this film was allowed to be financed. i love french films, & understand this unspoken rule of the "good with the bad...", so i do accept the occasional clinker. sadly, the wonderful actor, roschdy zem, participated in this farce. as to chiara mastroianna, she being the product of two cinema giants, i find her role difficult to define. maybe as an "angel" or as a "diversion", or simply an odd inclusion for no real reason, because "if" one were to follow the story line, there would be no woman in the latter stages of this movie.

at the end of the day; when french movies are good, its such a pleasure, when bad, they can be incredibly boring.

few admirable scenes. good acting. pieces of a story about a form of fight against life. an exercise by Xavier Beauvois not to convince but to give a sort of testimony about empty life. and the result is not bad. maybe,in some scenes, forced. a film about purpose, honest in its good intentions, cruel in a classic manner , cry from a long tradition, using the classical French cinema clichés but interesting for its beautiful moments. far to be great, it is body for delicate, precise images and that is its basic virtue. so, a good work, touching, cold, in same measure, not coherent at all but the kind of show who remains as few crumbs of memories.