Vincent Boujon: Alive!
In the series ”Documentary of the Month” the Danish Cinemateket shows the French ”Alive!”, a warm light-hearted film about five HIV positive men, who meet to train for a skydiving experience. They talk about being gay, about their first sexual experience (and the worst!), about the reactions from the world around them when they are declared and declares themselves as seropositive, and how it is to take pills in public and to be in love. The film succeeds to get close to all of them (even if my wife who watched it with me wanted more about their background, she has a point), whereas what first of all attracted me were the moments, when they got off the ground, up in the air, pale just before the jump out into being alone somewhere between earth and sky. The camera is with them, it is for someone suffering sometimes from vertigo, quite scary, you suffer with them, but you have luckily a good time with them, when they are back on ground.
I could have lived with less technical instructions, but some of them characterise the five, with the oldest Pascal as a man, who stands out with his charisma and his story about lost love and loneliness. He and Matteo, the youngest, are not flying alone, they need to hang on to an instructor – Matteo: I am afraid I will fall in love with him!
There is a lot of humour in this feel-good, informative documentary about friendship and about how it has been to be gay and be diagnosed with HIV. Lovely film.
In Cinemateket Copenhagen from March 24 to March 30.
France, 2014, 80 mins.
