I’ve been obsessed with 120 BPM and I was very keen to hear what Mike, who is much younger and not gay, thought of it. Is my obsession due to purely personal reasons – the film seems to reflect a part of my youth – or is the film also as good as I think it is? Is it a niche film or does it have meanings and feelings to communicate to a broader audience? Is the movie really great or is it something I’m just particularly vulnerable to and merely weep at the thought of? We talk about it in relation to Matthew Lopez’ The Inheritance currently on at the Young Vic in London. We also discuss the film as ‘director-as-editor’ filmmaking. We agree that there isn’t a moment to cut in what is quite a long film. We discuss the opening sequences, all meetings, political actions, and introducing of characters; we also discuss the sex scene in the hospital, as one of the best ever filmed. We discuss how sex and desire in the film is always on the table and how it takes on different meanings within the film. We also touch on film form but always only as a way of understanding what the film shows in a historical context. Mike liked it and was not sorry I’d bullied him into seeing it.

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José Arroyo and Michael Glass of Writing About Film