Savage Nights
"Savage Nights" is a disturbing look at AIDS from the viewpoint of a bisexual man who learns he has the disease but fails to inform his primary partner, a young woman who falls obsessively in love with him.This fictionalized but autobiographical film, written (from his own book) and directed by Cyril Collard, who also stars, is relentlessly downbeat and problematic, dealing as it does with a 30-year-old man who knows he is dying and doesn't seem to care who he takes with him.
Basically, Collard plays an egotistical jerk whose reckless behavior is as annoying as it is disturbing, though the first half of the film holds an infuriating fascination.
But then it rolls downhill as his girlfriend (played by the winning Romane Bohringer, who recently starred in "The Accompanist") becomes obsessive in what seems like a low-rent version of "Fatal Attraction" and his boyfriend aligns himself with skinheads in what seems like a low-rent version of "Romper Stomper."
The second half of the film is so relentlessly depressing and disgusting that it effectively undermines everything that has gone before.
That Collard died a year ago — just before this film won four Cesar Awards (the French version of Oscar), including best picture — adds a layer of reality to the proceedings. But it doesn't make the movie any easier to endure.