Watch Paris 05:59 / Théo & Hugo For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

Memorable, crazy movie

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

First daring and then lazy, 'Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo' is a very schizophrenic piece of filmmaking that could have been something extremely effective but ends up leaving the viewer feeling apathetic.The film's opening twenty minutes features a gay orgy in a real French sex club. Bathed in a pool of red light, all actors involved in the scene (and some are probably not even actors) are fully naked with erections, and the sex is real. Despite all this, the scene doesn't feel exploitative or cheap and pornographic, it comes off as fascinating and even sexy (which is incredibly rare for modern gay films), it feels nothing like lazy gay pornography.So far, so good. The problem is that the film's excitement comes to a screeching halt when Théo & Hugo leave the sanctity of the fantasy; their union was real inside the intoxicating red light, but the film's attempt to connect the two characters outside of the orgasm is incredibly boring and even unlikeable. Like a one night stand, it's hard to care after the sex. The film quickly slips into the overly-familiar and painfully dull terrain of LGBT romance/confliction storylines: 'have we made a connection?', 'do I like him?', 'does he make me angry or does he turn me on?' -- we just don't care. Théo & Hugo consumed their spontaneous energy at the beginning of the film. Maybe they should have left it there.I'm glad that this film was made, for its HIV educational element is important, and the idea of the film is very good and challenging, but 'Théo' and 'Hugo' are given plenty of time to speak and neither has anything interesting to say. If we don't care about the characters, it's hard to care about their fate.The film is shot in real time in an effort to encapsulate an intoxicating (and probably fleeting) connection between two human being as it happens, but it never convinces. The duo encounters other lonely creatures of the night, such as black night watchmen and Syrian asylum seekers, but it's all too contrived to ever feel real.

The first 20 minutes was pure pornography, plain and simple. It went on far too long. So long that I got incredibly bored at watching. I can understand that setting the scene in the first place with them in the sex club, but not 20 minutes.Francois Nambot had a more realistic performance than Geoffrey Couet. The performance from Francois was particularly realistic when during the moments immediately learning that Geoffrey's character penetrated him without protection.Geoffrey Couet's performance on the other hand was unbelievable. Theo was supposed to show the he was scared and anxious about the possibility of contracting HIV, and I just didn't sense that from him. It was lacklustre.It was also nice to learn that the doctor that gave Theo the PEP treatment was not an actress but an actual doctor.The sex scene was really the only thing with substance in the movie, and even that was boring after the length of it dragged on.

CONTAINS SPOILERS!I really love this film and I dare to say is the best queer movie I've seen in 2016. The plot is simple but the execution is marvelous. The beginning introduce the two main characters in one of the best orgy scenes in the contemporary cinema -yes, with frontal male nudes and explicit sex, but in an artistic and not (so) pornographic way- and then, we assist a very long ride across Paris's streets (I just love movies that show you a city in a simple and non-touristy way, like Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy) with a huge revelation that create the best twist in the movie… and are barely 4:45 a.m. The next hour is full of tension, anxiety, humor and existentialist revelations with the word VIH+ in center of the conflict between Théo and Hugo. The both actors has a chemistry that really you can feel it in the entire movie, with the presence of a few amazing incidental characters that portrait in some ways the social features of Paris. The long conversation that keep Théo close to Hugo has a very theatrical tension that's ends in a lovely and uncertain way ("Then what?"). Definitely, directors and writers Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau knows how to make a romantic tale with the real and actual issues of the gay male community.

The best scene of the film is definitely the opening scene, an explicit orgy in a basement backroom in an urban gay sex club that renders the platform for the two main characters to meet, and for us to become acquainted to them, at the most profound level. That same depth is never reached again throughout the rest of film. What we get are boring conversations like "what do you do?" "where are you from?" "I study so and so," etc, as they walk through some of Paris' ugliest streets. There are also a few loose references to classical French authors to fill the intellectualism quota, as well as some nuggets of dubious political propaganda. The two characters do not connect on any level, other than sex. And one notices. The dialogue is uninteresting. I am alright with cinema verité, but one has to manage to keep the viewer engaged. It didn't succeed.