In this scene it’s noted that the chances of Theo contracting HIV from that single encounter are less than one percent. Nevertheless the doctor advises his undergoing the currently standard morning-after treatment, which involves taking pills for 28 days. As much as this solution seems viable, it doesn’t banish the tension and mistrust that have emerged between the men since Hugo dropped his bombshell.
The remainder of the film follows the guys as they wend their way homeward and basically try to decide if they want this new relationship to last more than this one night or not. The key here is an attraction that looks from the very first like love, and the film conveys its growth—amid difficulties like those just noted—both delicately and persuasively.
“People tell me to learn to live with AIDS. I don’t want to live with it,” Hugo notes somewhat morosely. “I want to live against it.” With dialogue like this, “Paris 05:59” conjures a world and a moment in time, and it does so with an understated skill throughout. Enormous credit, though, must also go to the casting and performances of the two actors. Couet and Nambot are slender, nice- but not extraordinary-looking twentysomethings who are very believable in their roles, but most of all have a chemistry that makes you wonder how much of their romantic attraction is acting.
Twenty or 30 years ago, the explicitness and authenticity of “Paris 05:59” might’ve made it into a crossover hit. Indeed, Cyril Collard’s “Savage Nights” (1992), which had some of the same qualities, became one of the most honored French films of its era. But today, exceptions-that-prove-the-rule like “Weekend” and “Stranger by the Lake” notwithstanding, such films rarely escape cinema’s gay ghetto. “Paris 05:59,”’s charms are likely slight enough, and its raunch raunchy enough, to keep it from becoming one of those rare exceptions.
Plus, gays of these characters’ age are likely to find it curiously outdated, since PrEP is never mentioned. But then, if you took the specter of AIDS away from the story, it would lose much of its drama. That reality poses interesting questions about the future of films like this.
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