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Savage Nights is a semi-autobiographical story of the rebellion of a suburban Frenchman with AIDS (writer-director Cyril Collard) who carelessly slips in and out of bisexual affairs. A major hit in France, where it won the César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) three days after its creator died of AIDS, this is a bitter, energetic look at love in the '90s, one that is far removed from Jonathan Demme's more whitewashed
Philadelphia. Collard's story is jumbled, but his presence is inviting as a latter-day bohemian. Romane Bohringer (
The Accompanist) plays one of his loves, a woman with maddening devotion.
--Doug Thomas
This is the story of Jean, a young French bisexual filmmaker with AIDS, caught between the opposing charms of Laura (Romane Bohringer) and Samy (Carlos López). He is played by Cyril Collard, a young French bisexual filmmaker with AIDS, who also directed the movie and wrote the screenplay, based on his own original novel. The personal intensity of the project, sadly, does not end there: Collard died in March, 1993, three days after his work won four César awards, including the prize for best film. Bearing this in mind, it is hard to confront the film with a clear eye, but what one sees is vigorous, wordy, and broken-backed. For those who who found "Philadelphia" too kindly and sanitized, the emotional dirt of "Savage Nights" will come as a relief; when Laura learns of Jean's condition, she throws a fit and then takes off his condom, wanting to prove her love with perilous sex. It's that old French refrain, the dark poetry of the death wish, and the best scenes consist simply of the hero gunning his red sports car through the night. But the movie disintegrates badly, and loses force; the characters seem not so much to be living through their experiences as using them to strike a philosophical pose. When Laura starts confiding her thoughts to Jean's answering machine, you, too, will be longing for the end. In French. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
