My Chicago International Film Festival Diary (Part 1)

I kept a long-standing promise to myself this year, and actually scheduled a week off work around the Chicago International Film Festival.  So far, I have four films on my agenda with the option to spontaneously head into the city for anything else that strikes my fancy.  Here's my first report.

I headed to the River East AMC theater for the first time on Sunday - a cool, cloudy day following a Saturday deluge of heavy rain.  The Chicago River had spilled over its banks and splashed into the outdoor cafes along the city's Riverwalk, which were closed and ghostly quiet that morning.  

The audience was also surprisingly sparse at the late morning screening of BPM (also known as 120 Battements Par Minute in France). Director Robin Campillo's drama about AIDS in early '90s Paris took the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year, and it's not hard to see why. The film is stirring and heartbreaking in equal measures, with very strong performances and expressionistic visual imagery that is at once sad, profound and beautiful.

The film opens at a meeting of ActUp Paris,the Gallic counterpoint of the USA's radical anti-AIDS activist group.  A earnest young man looks directly into the camera and outlines the rules of order for the group's weekly meetings; it's soon reveled that he's talking to a group of new members, but the scene also helps the audience comprehend the many fast-paced, debate-filled meeting scenes that follow. 

This same character is seen throughout the film on the edges of the group's actions (protest marches, disruptions of speeches and public events to throw fake blood or the ashes of dead AIDS victims on 'all talk/no action' scientists and politicians). He never seems to really participate, but rather looks on his fellow activists with wonder and obvious admiration.  He is clearly the stand-in for Campillo, who directs BPM with a cool, documentarian's touch. It's full of righteously angry characters given to fiery debates, yet the film itself never feels angry or polemical.  It does, however, have energy and a well-calibrated rhythmic intensity as it cycles through scenes of Act Up meetings, dance clubs, and intimate encounters between the two lovers at the story's center.  These particular types of scenes recur at predictable intervals, and yet the shape and focus of those scenes evolves as the stakes become more desperate. 

The stand-out in the cast is Nahuel Perez Biscayart, who portrays one of the most spirited members of Act Up  - and whose illness progresses most quickly.  All the young actors are good, but it's Biscayart whose presence and energy light up every scene he's in.  

Most of the audience sat through the entire closing credits crawl before leaving the theater, which for me is proof of BPM's emotional power; you can't get up and walk away from it easily.  This is France's submission for next year's Best Foreign-Language film Oscar. I'm going out on a limb and predicting that it will not only make the nomination's shortlist, but that it will actually win.

By the time BPM concluded, the sun had come out in Chicago.  I had nearly two hours to kill before another Metra train would head back to the northwest suburbs, so I took my time strolling down Michigan Avenue and State Street, popping into stores along the way.  It was maddening.  As is usual for a Sunday, the streets and stores were filled with tourists. Only these weren't the usual folks who drive in from Indiana or Wisconsin for the weekend; today's tourist trade was largely European or Asian and they were clamoring to scoop up clearance-priced designer handbags at Macy's, bargain-priced gewgaws at Nordstrom Rack, chocolate at Dylan's Candy Bar, makeup at Sephora.... you name it. Their near-manic quest to scoop up American consumer goods was startling.

Later, as I struggled to cross the DuSable Bridge, squeezing myself between out-of-towners snapping selfies in which the Trump building would loom ominously behind them, I had an uncharitable thought. "These damn tourists...." the thought began, and spiraled downward from there.

When I had finally settled in with a bowl of tomato basil soup at the Corner Bakery on Wacker Drive - blessedly uncrowded in mid-afternoon and largely tourist-free - I was able to see the irony in my irritation. Surely someone in Prague... and in Rome... and Verona... and Venice... had felt the same away about ME this past summer!