Savage Nights [Les Nuits Fauves] **** (1992, Cyril Collard, Romane Bohringer, Carlos López) – Classic Movie Review 3635

‘I feel I’m going through life like an American tourist, doing as many towns as possible.’ – Jean. Writer-director Cyril Collard stars as the bisexual HIV-positive film-maker Jean in his own promising movie Savage Nights [Les Nuits Fauves], which is notable as the first film to win Best Film and Best First Film at the French equivalent of the Oscars, the Césars.

Collard’s film is a daring, honest and sincere if relentlessly dour and depressing one-note 1992 drama about what he sees as the impossibility of love. Unfortunately, it is hard to identify with the hero, who is, probably unintentionally, unsympathetic. Jean is selfish, smug, promiscuous and irresponsible, and that is alienating.

Jean treats the love-struck teenage girl Laure (Romane Bohringer) he meets for a screen test with the same mix of Gallic puppy dog charm and superior disdain he turns on the other person who loves him – a bisexual Spanish rugby player (Carlos López). As a self portrait, it is devastatingly candid.

Collard did not live to see his double win. The film’s special poignancy comes from the knowledge that Collard himself was HIV-positive at the time of filming and succumbed to AIDS on the eve of the film winning four Césars (1993) including Best Film, Best First Work, Most Promising Actress and Best Editing. He died just three days before the ceremony, aged 35.

This début feature film, based on Collard’s partly autobiographical novel, shows a considerable budding talent, and it is a tragedy this young life was cut short. It is his only feature film.

Collard’s long-time companion, Corine Blue, plays the role of Laure’s mother. Also in the cast are Claude Winter as Jean’s mother, Réne-Marc Bini as Marc, Maria Schneider as Noria, Clémentine Célarié as Marianne, Michel Voletti as Mr André and Jean-Christophe Bouvet as Serge.

The actor Collard chose to play Jean ended up in prison before the shoot so he took the role himself.

Savage Nights [Les Nuits Fauves] was released in France in October 1992. It had 2,800,000 admissions and was the ninth highest grossing film of the year.

Collard said: ‘Jean’s struggle with the illness is also a struggle with stupidity, with all sorts of racism, with tyranny. Jean acts as though nothing were different in his daily life. He continues to drink, laugh and drive fast. In his own way, he is shattering the taboos. He does not let himself get locked into the status of being HIV-positive, like some people for whom the illness becomes a sort of identity card.’