You won't be disappointed!

Too much of everything

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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.

French queer filmmakers Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's seventh feature, Paris 05:59: THÉO & HUGO alludes as much to Agnès Varda's CLEO FROM 5 To 7 in its relation to the real-time plot device, as to Richard Linklater's BEFORE… trilogy, where two individuals are trying to build something intimate and meaningful through small talks in a spontaneously perambulating pace. But, as a testimonial to the filmmakers true grits, the film takes a bold and sensational initiative to instantaneously put off the prudish and conservative alike, by kicking off the movie with a lurid hardcore sex orgy inside an iridescent bar through the eye of a predator seeking his preys, and then setting its focal point to our two titular protagonists struck by coup de foudre and beginning to consummate their libidinous thrusting in the accompaniment of trippy beats and day-glo lights, but with a consequence, which Ducastel-Martineau duo tactfully explores as the brunt of what happens later that night when they exit together from the bar at 04:47 A.M.The film does a cracking job in establishing the "sex first, love later" scenario in a post-AIDS 21st century, when carnal impulse receding, the two strangers, both are satisfying with their physical encounter, make tentative steps to know each other from the scratch, and their bonhomie hits a halt when a felix culpa pans out, and the duo must re-connect their rhythm and re-consider their possible future within an approximate one-hour time-line as the film finishes precisely at 06:00.More often than not, a film hyped by unsimulated sex sequences would suffer from being made light of its less grandstanding elements, for example, Ducastel-Martineau duo's apt punctuation of commentaries concerning those socially marginalized: a hospital devolves the night shift to its distaff employees, homophobia vituperation pelted to the sexuality minority, a Syrian immigrant's perspective on freedom and a senior chambermaid's impromptu babbling (and a resultant blooper for the sharp-eyed), all add a touch of political angel but never overstay their welcome.The two leads are giving a wholesomely winning and empathetic performance (if it sounds like an understatement after their corporeal sacrifice of leaving nothing to imagination), Geoffrey Couët inhabits a somewhat rustic complexion into Théo's wide-eyed-ness, and François Nambot as Hugo, often takes the lead in their conversation with his youthful urbanity and amiability, a smitten, can-do spirit has no affectation and pretension, which makes the ineffable ending such a boon to be appreciated, not just for their hard-earned chance, but also for Ducastel-Martineau's ingenuity and seeming effortlessness (a keen eye of a nocturnal locus under the unadorned lighting arrangement) of conjuring up something extraordinarily honest, heartfelt and aesthetically arresting out of an ordinary story arc, it is never too soon to signpost this film as the new landmark in today's ever-progressive queer cinema-scape, because the battle hasn't been (completely) won yet.

"Paris 05:59" tells a very realistic story of love between two men, Theo and Hugo. They meet in a sex club in Paris. This is the opening scene of the movie, and it is not for any prudes. And it isn't just a "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" scene. It lasts for 20 minutes and nothing is left to the imagination.The story really begins when the two lovers depart the club and on their way to someone's apartment, they realize one of them has had unprotected sex with a partner who is HIV-positive. The mere fact one of them insists they immediately go to be tested demonstrated (to me, at least) this was probably more than just a one-time tryst in a sex club. The movie delves deeper into how these two men actually feel about, well, everything. I have not seen a movie (probably since "Brokeback Mountain") that demonstrates so deeply the passion and love that can actually exist between two men. This movie is either not rated or is NC-17. There is EXPLICIT sexual activity in the first 20 minutes, and there is graphic nudity. There is also a love between two men that few films have dared to attempt to show. I loved it.

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.