Sorry Angel (Plaire, aimer et courir vite) (Christophe Honoré, 2018)

As many reviewers have already noted, the poignancy of Christophe Honoré's new film comes not so much from its depiction of the AIDS crisis and the losses taken during that period. It's the way that Sorry Angel shows a group of men, of various ages, struggling to live something approximating ordinary lives, with the AIDS crisis droning in the background and, in many cases coursing through their veins. This is a film about the drudgery of resilience, the way that for many people in the 80s and 90s, death became a constant shadow.

This separates Sorry Angel from both the militancy of Robin Campillo's BPM and the lyricism of André Téchiné's The Witnesses, two of the greatest films about AIDS. There is a scene in Sorry Angel in which its protagonist, the writer Jacques Tondelli (Pierre Deladonchamps) is chatted up by a publicist, and she refers to him as "Mr. AIDS," as though his public persona as an artist is somehow summed up by his seropositive status. Now, she is clearly doing this ironically, making fun of a tendency she seems to see at work in the promotional machine around Jacques. But it is still jarring, not just because it is so tasteless, but because Honoré has done everything but make Jacques "Mr. AIDS." His HIV+ status has in no way defined his character.

What has defined Jacques is a restlessness, an impetuousness that comes from trying to fit as much life as possible into the time he has left. And yet, even this is not clearly a result of his awareness of possible mortality. One gets the sense that this is who Jacques has always been. So when he hits on the much younger Arthur (Vincent Lacoste), in a great scene in a French cinematheque, he is smooth and roguish and coy, and we see just what kind of game the guy has. At the same time, we see Jacques as a father, and as a part of an alternative family unit with his son Loulou (Tristan Farge) and his good friend Matthieu (Denis Podalydès). He is often distracted, frequently brusque. His art gets in the way of his relationships. He is an asshole who cares.

This shines through particularly well in a key scene with his ex-lover Marco (Thomas Gonzalez), who comes to stay with Jacques once he is in an advanced state of AIDS-related illness. Jacques is in the bath and Marco comes in, noting that he has not bathed in weeks, and Jacques brings him into the tub with him. This is a moment of tenderness that Jacques flashes back to after Marco's death, in a shot-sequence reminiscent of Gregory Markopoulos. Honoré, much like Patrice Chéreau before him, is a master at depicting the beauty of the male body, calling on the tropes of classical painting while infusing them with frank gay desire.

This is, ultimately, a film about innocence and experience. Arthur is leaving his small-town Brittany life behind to start anew in Paris, and it his affair with Jacques that gives him the courage to do so. But as Honoré makes clear, his is a journey that is just beginning, whereas Jacques's is coming to its end. They were fortunate to intersect, but they had no future. And inasmuch as they are shown to be two unique individuals, they also represent two moments in gay male history. Arthur's identity forms near the end of the AIDS crisis, and he will live to see the drug cocktail. And so there is a world that awaits him that, for the previous generation, was radically foreclosed. 

In the image above, Jacques has just finished making love with Arthur, and he begins sobbing for the memory of Marco. This captures the ambivalent, precarious state of existence that the younger man will be spared, by the grace of God.